"SENSUOUS, THRILLING, WONDERFUL"SENSUOUS, THRILLING, WONDERFUL!"
Houston Chronicle
 
"SENSATIONAL AND FANTASTIC... WOVEN WITH UNCANNY MAGIC . . . hypnotically poetic 
in tone, rich in sensory imagery and dense with the darkness that lies behind 
the veil of human thought."
St. Luis Post-Dispatch
 
"UNUSUALLY MOVING."
Miami Herald
 
"Anne Rice is a writer who follows a hidden path... into an unfamiliar world. 
But if you surrender and go with her on her eerie journey, you will find that 
you have surrendered to enchantment, as if in a voluptuous dream."
The Boston Globe
 
"A MASTERFUL SUSPENSE STORY... From the beginning we are seduced, hypnotized by 
the voice of the vampire .... plumbs the deepest recesses of human sensuality:"
Chicago Tribune
 
"A BONAFIDE BLOCKBUSTER . . . AUDACIOUS, EROTIC, AND UNFORGETTABLE . . .
An unmitigated terror trip not meant for the weak of heart. Seldom before has 
this mythical being been so explored and exposed. The imaginative plot plunges 
you into the world of the undead and leads you on a journey that begins in the 
New Orleans of 200 years ago. The author's . . . vampire gives a first person 
account of his past. His ghastly initiation into the netherworld is as mesmeric 
as is the discovery he is not alone in the nightly search for warm fresh blood."
The Cincinnati Enquirer
 
Also by Anne Rice
Published by Ballantine Books:
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE
THE VAMPIRE LESTAT
THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS
CRY TO HEAVEN
THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED
THE MUMMY: OR RAMSES THE DAMNED
 
Book 1 of The Vampire Chronicles
 
BALLANTINE BOOKS - NEW YORK
 
For Stan Rice, Carole Malkin, and Alice O'Brien Borchardt
Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is 
coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" 
and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
Copyright (c) 1976 by Anne O'Brien Rice
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. 
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, 
Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, 
Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-36792
ISBN 0-345-33766-2
This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Ballantine Books Edition: May 1977 Forty-fourth Printing: June 1992
First Canadian Printing: May 1977
Cover Design: Scudellari/Munson/Aquan
 
PART I
 
"I see . . .' said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the 
room towards the window. For a long time he stood there against the dim light 
from Divisadero Street and the passing beams of traffic. The boy could see the 
furnishings of the room more clearly now, the round oak table, the chairs. A 
wash basin hung on one wall with a mirror. He set his brief case on the table 
and waited.
"But how much tape do you have with you?" asked the vampire, turning now so the 
boy could see his profile. "Enough for the story of a life?"
"Sure, if it's a good life. Sometimes I interview as many as three or four 
people a night if I'm lucky. But it has to be a good story. That's only fair, 
isn't it?"
"Admirably fair," the vampire answered. "I would like to tell you the story of 
my life, then. I would like to do that very much."
"Great," said the boy. And quickly he removed the small tape recorder from his 
brief case, making a check of the cassette and the batteries. "I'm really 
anxious to hear why you believe this, why you . . ."
"No," said the vampire abruptly. "We can't begin that way. Is your equipment 
ready?"
"Yes," said the boy.
"Then sit down. I'm going to turn on the overhead light."
"But I thought vampires didn't like light," said the boy. "If you think the dark 
adds to the atmosphere."
" But then he stopped. The vampire was watching him with his back to the window. 
The boy could make out nothing of his face now, and something about the still 
figure there distracted him. He started to say something again but he said 
nothing. And then he sighed with relief when the vampire moved towards the table 
and reached for the overhead cord.
At once the room was flooded with a harsh yellow light. And the boy, staring up 
at the vampire, could not repress a gasp. His fingers danced backwards on the 
table to grasp the edge. "Dear God!" he whispered, and then he gazed, 
speechless, at the vampire.
The vampire was utterly white and smooth, as if he were sculpted from bleached 
bone, and his face was as seemingly inanimate as a statue, except for two 
brilliant green eyes that looked down at the boy intently like flames in a 
skull. But then the vampire smiled almost wistfully, and the smooth white 
substance of his face moved with the infinitely flexible but minimal lines of a 
cartoon. "Do you see?" he asked softly.
The boy shuddered, lifting his hand as if to shield himself from a powerful 
light. His eyes moved slowly over the finely tailored black coat he'd only 
glimpsed in the bar, the long folds of the cape, the black silk tie knotted at 
the throat, and the gleam of the white collar that was as white as the vampire's 
flesh. He stared at the vampire's full black hair, the waves that were combed 
back over the tips of the ears, the curls that barely touched the edge of the 
white collar.
"Now, do you still want the interview?" the vampire asked.
The boy's mouth was open before the sound came out. He was nodding. Then he 
said, "Yes."
The vampire sat down slowly opposite him and, leaning forward, said gently, 
confidentially, "Don't be afraid. Just start the tape."
And then he reached out over the length of the table. The boy recoiled, sweat 
running down the sides of his face. The vampire clamped a hand on the boy's 
shoulder and said, "Believe me, I won't hurt you. I want this opportunity. It's 
more important to me than you can realize now. I want you to begin." And he 
withdrew his hand and sat collected, waiting.
It took a moment for the boy to wipe his forehead and his lips with a 
handkerchief, to stammer that the microphone was in the machine, to press the 
button, to say that the machine was on.
"You weren't always a vampire, were you?" he began.
"No," answered the vampire. "I was a twenty-five year-old man when I became a 
vampire, and the year was seventeen ninety-one."
The boy was startled by the preciseness of the date and he repeated it before he 
asked, "How did it come about?"
"There's a simple answer to that. I don't believe I want to give simple 
answers," said the vampire. "I think I want to tell the real story. . . '
"Yes," the boy said quickly. He was folding his handkerchief over and over and 
wiping his lips now with it again.
"There was a tragedy . . ." the vampire started. "It was my younger brother . . 
. . He died." And then he stopped, so that the boy cleared his throat and wiped 
at his face again before stuffing the handkerchief almost impatiently into his 
pocket.
"It's not painful, is it?" he asked timidly.
"Does it seem so?" asked the vampire. "No." He shook his head. "It's simply that 
I've only told this story to one other person. And that was so long ago. No, 
it's not pa'
"We were living. in Louisiana then. We'd received a land grant and settled two 
indigo plantations on the Mississippi very near New Orleans . . . ."
"Ah, that's the accent . . ." the boy said softly.
For a moment the vampire stared blankly. "I have an accent?" He began to laugh.
And the boy, flustered, answered quickly. "I noticed it in the bar when I asked 
you what you did for a living. It's just a slight sharpness to the consonants, 
that's all. I never guessed it was French."
"It's all right," the vampire assured him. "ran not as shocked as I pretend to 
be. It's only that I forget it from time to time. But let me go on. . . . '
"Please . . " said the boy.
"I was talking about the plantations. They had a great deal to do with it, 
really, my becoming a vampire. But I'll come to that. Our life there was both 
luxurious and primitive. And we ourselves found it extremely attractive. You 
see, we lived far better there than we could have ever lived in France. Perhaps 
the sheer wilderness of Louisiana only made it seem so, but seeming so, it was. 
I remember the imported furniture that cluttered the house." The vampire smiled. 
"And the harpsichord; that was lovely. My sister used to play it. On summer 
evenings, she would sit at the keys with her back to the open French windows. 
And I can still remember that thin, rapid music and the vision of the swamp 
rising beyond her, the moss-hung cypresses floating against the sky. And there 
were the sounds of the swamp, a chorus of creatures, the cry of the birds. I 
think we loved it. It made the rosewood furniture all the more precious, the 
music more delicate and desirable. Even when the wisteria tore the shutters oft 
the attic windows and worked its tendrils right into the whitewashed brick in 
less than a year . . . . Yes, we loved it. All except my brother. I don't think 
I ever heard him complain of anything, but I knew how he felt. My father was 
dead then, and I was head of the family and I had to defend him constantly from 
my mother and sister. They wanted to take him visiting, and to New Orleans for 
parties, but he hated these things. I think he stopped going altogether before 
he was twelve: Prayer was what mattered to him, prayer and his leather-bound 
lives of the saints.
"Finally I built him an oratory removed from the house, and he began to spend 
most of every day there and often the early evening. It was ironic, really. He 
was so different from us, so different from everyone, and I was so regular! 
There was nothing extraordinary about me whatsoever." The vampire smiled.
"Sometimes in the evening I would go out to him and find him in the garden near 
the oratory, sitting absolutely composed on a stone bench there, and I'd tell 
him my troubles, the difficulties I had with the slaves, how I distrusted the 
overseer or the weather or my brokers . . . all the problems that made up the 
length and breadth of my existence. And he would listen, making only a few 
comments, always sympathetic, so that when I left him I had the distinct 
impression he bad solved everything for me. I didn't think I could deny him 
anything, and I vowed that no matter how it would break my heart to lose him, he 
could enter the priesthood when the time came. Of course, I was wrong." The 
vampire stopped.
For a moment the boy only gazed at him and then he started as if awakened from 
deep thought, and he floundered, as if he could not find the right words. "Ali . 
he didn't want to be a priest?" the boy asked. The vampire studied him as if 
trying to discern the meaning of his expression. Then he said:
"I meant that I was wrong about myself, about my not denying him anything." His 
eyes moved over the far wall and fixed on the panes of the window. "He began to 
see visions."
"Real visions?" the boy asked, but again there was hesitation, as if he were 
thinking of something else.
"I didn't think so," the vampire answered. It happened when he was fifteen. He 
was very handsome then. He had the smoothest skin and the largest blue eyes. He 
was robust, not thin as I am now and was then . . . but his eyes . . . it was as 
if when I looked into his eyes I was standing alone on the edge of the world . . 
. on a windswept ocean beach. There was nothing but the soft roar of the waves. 
Well," he said, his eyes still fixed on the window panes, "he began to see 
visions. He only hinted at this at first, and he stopped taking his meals 
altogether. He lived in the oratory. At any hour of day or night, I could find 
him on the bare flagstones kneeling before the altar. And the oratory itself was 
neglected. He stopped tending the candles or changing the altar cloths or even 
sweeping out the leaves. One night I became really alarmed when I stood in the 
rose arbor watching him for one solid hour, during which he never moved from his 
knees and never once lowered his arms, which he held outstretched in the form of 
a cross. The slaves all thought he was mad." The vampire raised his eyebrows in 
wonder. "I was convinced that he was only. . . overzealous. That in his love for 
God, he had perhaps gone too far. Then he told me about the visions. Both St. 
Dominic and the Blessed Virgin Mary had come to him in the oratory. They had 
told him he was to sell all our property in Louisiana, everything we owned, and 
use the money to do God's work in France. My brother was to be a great religious 
leader, to return the country to its former fervor, to turn the tide against 
atheism and the Revolution. Of course, he had no money of his own. I was to sell 
the plantations and our town houses in New Orleans and give the money to him."
Again the vampire stopped. And the boy sat motionless regarding him, astonished. 
"Ali . . . excuse me," he whispered. "What did you say? Did you sell the 
plantations?"
"No," said the vampire, his face calm as it had been from the start. "I laughed 
at him. And he . . . he became incensed. He insisted his command came from the 
Virgin herself. Who was I to disregard it? Who indeed?" he asked softly, as if 
he were thinking of this again. "Who indeed? And the more he tried to convince 
me, the more I laughed. It was nonsense, I told him, the product of an immature 
and even morbid mind. The oratory was a mistake, I said to him; I would have it 
torn down at once. He would go to school in New Orleans and get such inane 
notions out of his head. I don't remember all that I said. But I remember the 
feeling. Behind all this contemptuous dismissal on my part was a smoldering 
anger and a disappointment. I was bitterly disappointed. I didn't believe him at 
all."
"But that's understandable," said the boy quickly when the vampire paused, his 
expression of astonishment softening. "I mean, would anyone have believed him?"
"Is it so understandable?" The vampire looked at the boy. "I think perhaps it 
was vicious egotism. Let me explain. I loved my brother, as I told you, and at 
times I believed him to be a living saint. I encouraged him in his prayer and 
meditations, as I said, and I was willing to give him up to the priesthood. And 
if someone had told me of a saint in Arles or Lourdes who saw visions, I would 
have believed it. I was a Catholic; I believed in saints. I lit tapers before 
their marble statues in churches; I knew their pictures, their symbols, their 
names. But I didn't, couldn't believe my brother. Not only did I not believe he 
saw visions, I couldn't entertain the notion for a moment. Now, why? Because he 
was my brother. Holy he might be, peculiar most definitely; but Francis of 
Assisi, no. Not my brother. No brother of mine could be such. That is egotism. 
Do you see?"
The boy thought about it before he answered and then he nodded and said that 
yes, he thought that he did.
"Perhaps he saw the visions," said the vampire.
"Then you . . . you don't claim to know . . . now . . . whether he did not?"
"No, but I do know that he never wavered in his conviction for a second. That I 
know now and knew then the night he left my room crazed and grieved. He never 
wavered for an instant. And within minutes, he was dead."
"How?" the boy asked.
"He simply w out of the French doors onto the gallery and stood for a moment at 
the head of the brick stairs. And then he fell. He was dead when I reached the 
bottom, his neck broken." The vampire shook his head in consternation, but his 
face was still serene.
"'Did you see him fall?" asked the boy. "Did he lose his footing?"
"No, but two of the servants saw it happen. They said that he had looked up as 
if he had just seen something in the air. Then his entire body moved forward as 
if being swept by a wind. One of them said he was about to say something when he 
fell. I thought that he was about to say something too, but it was at that 
moment I turned away from the window. My back was turned when I heard the 
noise." He glanced at the tape recorder. "I could not forgive myself. I felt 
responsible for his death," he said. "And everyone else seemed to think I was 
responsible also."
"But how could they? You said they saw him fall"
"It wasn't a direct accusation. They simply knew that something had passed 
between us that was unpleasant. That we had argued minutes before the fall.
"The servants had heard us, my mother had heard us. My mother would not stop 
asking me what had happened and why my brother, who was so quiet, had been 
shouting. Then my sister joined in, and of course I refused to say. I was so 
bitterly shocked and miserable that I had no patience with anyone, only the 
vague determination they would not know about his `visions.' They would not know 
that he had become, finally, not a saint, but only a . . fanatic. My sister went 
to bed rather than face the funeral, and my mother told everyone in. the parish 
that something horrible had happened in my room which I would not reveal; and 
even the police questioned me, on the word of my own mother. Finally the priest 
came to see me and demanded to know what had gone on. I told no one. It was only 
a discussion, I said: I was not on the gallery when he fell, I protested, and 
they all stared at me as if rd killed him. And I felt that I'd killed him. I sat 
in the parlor beside his coffin for two days thinking, I have killed him. I 
stared at his face until spots appeared before my eyes and I nearly fainted. The 
back of his skull had been shattered on the pavement, and his head had the wrong 
shape on the pillow. I forced myself to stare at it, to study it simply because 
I could hardly endure the pain and the smell (r)f decay, and I was tempted over 
and over to try to open his eyes. All these were mad thoughts, mad impulses. The 
main thought was this: I had laughed at him; I had not believed him; I had not 
been kind to him. He had fallen because of me."
"This really happened, didn't it?" the boy whispered. "You're telling me 
something . .that's true."
"Yes," said the vampire, looking at him without surprise. "I want to go on 
telling you." But as his eyes passed over the boy and returned to the window, he 
showed only faint interest in the boy, who seemed engaged in some silent inner 
struggle.
"But you said you didn't know about the visions, that you, a vampire . . . 
didn't know for certain whether . .
"I want to take things in order," said the vampire, "I want to go on telling you 
things as they happened.
"No, I don't know about the visions. To this day." And again he waited until the 
boy said.
"Yes, please, please go on."
"Well, I wanted to sell the plantations. I never wanted to see the house or the 
oratory again. I leased them finally to an agency which would work them for me 
and manage things so I need never go there, and I moved my mother and sister to 
one of the town houses in New Orleans. Of course, I did not escape my brother 
for a moment. I could think of nothing but his body rotting in the ground. He 
was buried in the St. Louis cemetery in New Orleans, and I did everything to 
avoid passing those gates; but still I thought of him constantly. . Drunk or 
sober, I saw his body rotting in the coin, and I couldn't bear it. Over and over 
I dreamed that he was at the head of the steps and I was holding his arm, 
talking kindly to him, urging him back into the bedroom, telling him gently that 
I did believe him, that he must pray for me to have faith. Meantime, the slaves 
on Pointe du Lac (that was my plantation) had begun to talk of seeing his ghost 
on the gallery, and the overseer couldn't keep order. People in society asked my 
sister offensive questions about the whole incident, and she became an hysteric. 
She wasn't really an hysteric. She simply thought she ought to react that way, 
so she did. I drank all the time and was at home as little as possible. I lived 
like a man who wanted to die but who had no courage to do it himself. I walked 
black streets and alleys alone; I passed out in cabarets. I backed out of two 
duels more from apathy than cowardice and truly wished to be murdered. And then 
I was attacked. It might have been anyone-and my invitation was open to sailors, 
thieves, maniacs, anyone. But it was a vampire. He caught me lust a few steps 
from my door one night and left me for dead, or so I thought."
"You mean . . . he sucked your, blood?" the boy asked.
"Yes," the vampire laughed. "He sucked my blood. That is the way it's done."
"But you lived," said the young man. "You said he left you for dead."
"Well, he drained me almost to the point of death, which was for him sufficient. 
I was put to bed as soon as I was found, confused and really unaware of what had 
happened to me. I suppose I thought that drink had finally caused a stroke. I 
expected to die now and had no interest in eating of drinking or talking to the 
doctor. My mother sent for the priest. I was feverish by then and I told the 
priest everything, all about my brother's visions and what I had done. I 
remember I clung to his arm, making him swear over and over he would tell no 
one. `I know I didn't kill him,' I said to the priest finally. `It's that I 
cannot live now that he's dead. Not after the way I treated him.'
" 'That's ridiculous,' he answered me. `Of course you can live. There's nothing 
wrong with you but self-indulgence. Your mother needs you, not to mention your 
sister. And as for this brother of yours, he was possessed of the devil.' I was 
so stunned when he said this I couldn't protest. The devil made the visions, he 
went on to explain. The devil was rampant. The entire country of France was 
under the influence of the devil, and. the Revolution had been his greatest 
triumph. Nothing would have saved my brother but exorcism, prayer, and fasting, 
men to hold him down while the devil raged in his body and tried to throw him 
about. `The devil threw him down the steps; it's perfectly obvious,' he 
declared. `You weren't talking to your brother in that room, you were talking to 
the devil.' Well, this enraged me. I believed before that I had been pushed to 
my limits, but I had not. He went on talking about the devil, about voodoo 
amongst the slaves and cases of possession in other parts of the world. And I 
went wild. I wrecked the room in the process of nearly killing him."
"But your strength . . . the vampire . . .?" asked the boy.
"I was out of my mind," the vampire explained. "I did things I could not have 
done in perfect health. The scene is confused, pale, fantastical now. But I do 
remember that I drove him out of the back doors of the house, across the 
courtyard, and against the brick wall of the kitchen, where I pounded his head 
until I nearly killed him. When I was subdued finally, and exhausted then almost 
to the point of death, they bled me. The fools. But I was going to say something 
else. It was then that I conceived of my own egotism. Perhaps I'd seen it 
reflected in the priest. His contemptuous attitude towards my brother reflected 
my own; his immediate and shallow carping about the devil; his refusal to even 
entertain the idea that sanctity had passed so close."
"But he did believe in possession by the devil."
"That is a much more mundane idea," said the vampire immediately. "People who 
cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I 
don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness 
is eternally difficult. But you must understand, possession is really another 
way of saying someone is mad. I felt it was, for the priest. I'm sure he'd seen 
madness. Perhaps he had stood right over raving madness and pronounced it 
possession. You don't have to see Satan when he is exorcised. But to stand in 
the presence of a saint . . . To believe that the saint has seen a vision. No, 
it's egotism, our refusal to believe it could occur in our midst."
"I never thought of it in that way," said the boy. "But what happened to you? 
You said they bled you to cure you, and that must have nearly killed you."
The vampire laughed. "Yes. It certainly did. But the vampire came back that 
night. You see, he wanted Pointe du Lac, my plantation.
"It was very late, after my sister had fallen asleep. I can remember it as if it 
were yesterday. He came in from the courtyard, opening the French doors without 
a sound, a tall fair-skinned man with a mass of blond hair and a graceful, 
almost feline quality to his movements. And gently, he draped a shawl over my 
sister's eyes and lowered the wick of the lamp. She dozed there beside the basin 
and the cloth with which she'd bathed my forehead, and she ,never once stirred 
under that shawl until morning. But by that time I was greatly changed."
"What was this change?" asked the boy.
The vampire sighed. He leaned back against the chair and looked at the walls. 
"At first I thought he was another doctor, or someone summoned by the family to 
try to reason with me. But this suspicion was removed at once. He stepped close 
to my bed and leaned down so that his face was in the lamplight, and I saw that 
he was no ordinary man at all. His gray eyes burned with an incandescence, and 
the long white hands which hung by his sides were not those of a human being. I 
think I knew everything in that instant, and all that he told me was only 
aftermath. What I mean is, the moment I saw him, saw his extraordinary aura and 
knew him to be no creature I'd ever known, I was reduced to nothing. That ego 
which could not accept the presence of an extraordinary human being in its midst 
was crushed. All my conceptions, even my guilt and wish to die, seemed utterly 
unimportant. I completely forgot myself!" he said, now silently touching his 
breast with his fist. "I forgot myself totally. And in the same instant knew 
totally the meaning of possibility. From then on I experienced only increasing 
wonder. As he talked to me and told me of what I might become, of what his life 
had been and stood to be, my past shrank to embers. I saw my life as if I stood 
apart from it, the vanity, the self-serving, the constant fleeing from one petty 
annoyance after another, the lip service to God and the Virgin and a host of 
saints whose names filled my prayer books, none of whom made the slightest 
difference in a narrow, materialistic, and selfish existence. I saw my real gods 
. . the gods of most men. Food, drink, and security in conformity. Cinders."
The boy's face was tense with a mixture of confusion and amazement. "And so you 
decided to become a vampire?" he asked. The vampire was silent for a moment.
"Decided. It doesn't seem the right word. Yet I cannot say it was inevitable 
from the moment that he stepped into that room. No, indeed, it was not 
inevitable. Yet I can't say I decided. Let me say that when he'd finished 
speaking, no other decision was possible for me, and I pursued my course without 
a backward glance. Except for one."
"Except for one? What?"
"My last sunrise," said the vampire. "That morning, I was not yet a vampire. And 
I saw my last sunrise.
"I remember it completely; yet I do not think I remember any other sunrise 
before it. I remember the light came first to the tops of the French windows, a 
paling behind the lace curtains, and then a gleam growing brighter and brighter 
in patches among the leaves of the trees. Finally the sun came through the 
windows themselves and the lace lay in shadows on the stone floor, and all over 
the form of my sister, who was still sleeping, shadows of lace on the shawl over 
her shoulders and head. As soon as she was warm, she pushed the shawl away 
without awakening, and then the sun shone full on her eyes and she tightened her 
eyelids. Then it was gleaming on the table where she rested her head on her 
arms, and gleaming, blazing, in the water in the pitcher. And I could feel it on 
my hands on the counterpane and then on my face. I lay in the bed thinking about 
all the things the vampire had told me, and then it was that I said good-bye to 
the sunrise and went out to become a vampire. It was . . . the last sunrise."
The vampire was looking out the window again. And when he stopped, the silence 
was so sudden the boy seemed to hear it. Then he could hear the noises from the 
street. The sound of a truck was deafening. The light cord stirred with the 
vibration. Then the truck was gone.
"Do you miss it?" he asked then in a small voice.
"Not really," said the vampire. "There are so many other things. But where were 
we? You want to know how it happened, how I became a vampire."
"Yes," said the boy. "How did you change, exactly?"
"I can't tell you exactly," said the vampire. "I can tell you about it, enclose 
it with words that will make the value of it to me evident to you. But I can't 
tell you exactly, any more than I could tell you exactly what is the experience 
of sex if you have never had it."
The young man seemed struck suddenly with still another question, but before he 
could speak the vampire went on. "As I told you, this vampire Lestat, wanted the 
plantation. A mundane reason, surely, for granting me a life which will last 
until the end of the world; but he was not a very discriminating person. He 
didn't consider the world's small population of vampires as being a select club, 
I should say. He had human problems, a blind father who did not know his son was 
a vampire and must not find out. Living in New Orleans had become too difficult 
for him, considering his needs and the necessity to care for his father, and he 
wanted Pointe du Lac.
"We went at once to the plantation the next evening, ensconced the blind father 
in the master bedroom, and I proceeded to make the change. I cannot say that it 
consisted in any one step really-though one, of course, was the step beyond 
which I could make no return. But there were several acts involved, and the 
first was the death of the overseer. Lestat took him in his sleep. I was to 
watch and to approve; that is, to witness the taking of a human life as proof of 
my commitment and part of my change. This proved without doubt the most 
difficult part for me. I've told you I had no fear regarding my own death, only 
a squeamishness about taking my life myself. But I had a most high regard for 
the life of others, and a horror of death most recently developed because of my 
brother. I had to watch the overseer awake with a start, try to throw oft Lestat 
with both hands, fail, then lie there struggling under Lestat's grasp, and 
finally go limp, drained of blood. And die. He did not die at once. We stood in 
his narrow bedroom for the better part of an hour watching him die. Part of my 
change, as I said. Lestat would never have stayed otherwise. Then it was 
necessary to get rid of the overseer's body. I was almost sick from this. Weak 
and feverish already, I had little reserve; and handling the dead body with such 
a purpose caused me nausea,. Lestat was laughing, telling me callously that I 
would feel so different once I was a vampire that I would laugh, too. He was 
wrong about that. I never laugh at death, no matter how often and regularly I am 
the cause of it.
"But let me take things in order. We had to drive up the river road until we 
came to open fields and leave the overseer there. We tore his coat, stole his 
money, and saw to it his- lips were stained with liquor. I knew his wife, who 
lived in New Orleans, and knew the state of desperation she would suffer when 
the body was discovered. But more than sorrow for her, I felt pain that she 
would never know what had happened, that her husband had not been found drunk on 
the road by robbers. As we beat the body, bruising the face and the shoulders, I 
became more and more aroused. Of course, you must realize that all this time the 
vampire Lestat was extraordinary. He was no more human to me than a biblical 
angel. But under this pressure, my enchantment with him was strained. I had seen 
my becoming a vampire in two lights: The first light was simply enchantment; 
Lestat had overwhelmed me on my deathbed. But the other light was my wish for 
self-destruction. My desire to be thoroughly damned. This was the open door 
through which Lestat had come on both the first and second occasion. Now I was 
not destroying myself but someone else. The overseer, his wife, his family. I 
recoiled and might have fled from Lestat, my sanity thoroughly shattered, had 
not he sensed with an infallible instinct what was happening. Infallible 
instinct. . ." The vampire mused. "Let me say the powerful instinct of a vampire 
to whom even the slightest change in a human's facial expression is as apparent 
as a gesture. Lestat had preternatural timing. He rushed me into the carriage 
and whipped the horses home. `I want to die,' I began to murmur. `This is 
unbearable. I want to die. You have it in your power to kill me. Let me die.' I 
refused to look at him, to be spellbound by the sheer beauty of his appearance. 
He spoke my name to me softly, laughing. As I said, he was determined to have 
the plantation."
"But would he have let you go?" asked the boy. "Under any circumstances?"
"I don't know. Knowing Lestat as I do now, I would say he would have killed me 
rather than let me go. But this was what I wanted, you see. It didn't matter. 
No, this was what I thought I wanted. As soon as we reached the house, I jumped 
down out of the carriage and walked, a zombie, to the brick stairs where my 
brother had fallen. The house had been unoccupied for months now, the overseer 
having his own cottage, and the Louisiana heat and damp were already picking 
apart the steps. Every crevice was sprouting grass and even small wildflowers. I 
remember feeling the moisture which in the night was cool as I sat down on the 
lower steps and even rested my head against the brick and felt the little 
wax-stemmed wildflowers with my hands. I pulled a clump of them out of ,the easy 
dirt in one hand. `I want to die; kill me. Kill me,' I said to the vampire. `Now 
I am guilty of murder. I can't live.' He sneered with the impatience of people 
listening to the obvious lies of others. And then in a flash he fastened on me 
just as he had on my man. I thrashed against him wildly. I dug my boot into his 
chest and kicked him as fiercely as I could, his teeth stinging my throat, the 
fever pounding in my temples. And with a movement of his entire body, much too 
fast for me to see, he was suddenly standing disdainfully at the foot of the 
steps. `I thought you wanted to die, Louis,' he said."
The boy made a soft, abrupt sound when the vampire said his name which the 
vampire acknowledged with the quick statement, "Yes, that is my name," and went 
on.
"Well, I lay there helpless in the face of my own cowardice and fatuousness 
again," he said. "Perhaps so directly confronted with it, I might in time have 
gained the courage to truly take my life, not to whine and beg for others to 
take it. I saw myself turning on a knife then, languishing in a day-to-day 
suffering which I found as necessary as penance from the confessional, truly 
hoping death would find me unawares and render me ft for eternal pardon. And 
also I saw myself as if in a vision standing at the head of the stairs, just 
where my brother had stood, and then hurtling my body down on the bricks.
"But there was no time for courage. Or shall I say, there was no time in 
Lestat's plan for anything but his plan. `Now listen to me, Louis,' he said, and 
he lay down beside me now on the steps, his movement so graceful and so personal 
that at once it made me think
of a lover. I recoiled. But he put his right arm around me and pulled me close 
to his chest. Never had I been this close to him before, and in the dim light I 
could see the magnificent radiance of his eye and the unnatural mask of his 
skin. As I tried to move, he ,pressed his right fingers against my lips and 
said, Be still. I am going to drain you now to the very threshold of death, and 
I want you to be quiet, so quiet that you can almost hear the flow of blood 
through your veins, so quiet that you can hear the flow of that same blood 
through mine. It is your consciousness, your will, which must keep you alive.' I 
wanted to struggle, but he pressed so hard with his fingers that he held my 
entire prone body in check; and as soon as I stopped my abortive attempt at 
rebellion, he sank his teeth into my neck."
The boy's eyes grew huge. He had drawn farther and farther back in his chair as 
the vampire spoke, and now his face was tense, his eyes narrow, as if he were 
preparing to weather a blow.
"Have you ever lost a great amount of blood?" asked the vampire. "Do you know 
the feeling?"
The boy's lips shaped the word no, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat. 
"No," he said.
"Candles burned in the upstairs parlor, where we had planned the death of the 
overseer. An oil lantern swayed in the breeze on the gallery. All of this light 
coalesced and began to shimmer, as though a golden presence hovered above me, 
suspended in the stairwell, softly entangled with the railings, curling and 
contracting like smoke. `Listen, keep your eyes wide,' Lestat whispered to me, 
his lips moving against my neck. I remember that the movement of his lips raised 
the hair all over my body, sent a shock of sensation through my body that was 
not unlike the pleasure of passion. . . "
He mused, his right fingers slightly curled beneath his chin, the first finger 
appearing to lightly stroke it. "The result was that within minutes I was weak 
to paralysis. Panic-stricken, I discovered I could not even will myself to 
speak. Lestat still held me, of course, and his arm was like the weight of an 
iron bar. I felt his teeth withdraw with such a keenness that the two puncture 
wounds seemed enormous, lined with pain. And now he bent over my helpless head 
and, taking his right hand off me, bit his own wrist. The blood flowed down upon 
my shirt and coat, and he watched it with a narrow, gleaming eye. It seemed an 
eternity that he watched it, and that shimmer of light now hung behind his head 
like the backdrop of an apparition. I think that I knew what he meant to do even 
before he did it, and I was waiting in my helplessness as if I'd been waiting 
for years. He pressed his bleeding wrist to my mouth, said firmly, a little 
impatiently, `Louis, drink.' And I did. `Steady, Louis,' and `Hurry,' he 
whispered to me a number of times. I drank, sucking the blood out of the holes, 
experiencing for the first time since infancy the special pleasure of sucking 
nourishment, the body focused with the mind upon one vital source. Then 
something happened." The vampire sat back, a slight frown on his face.
"How pathetic it is to describe these things which can't truly be described," he 
said, his voice loci almost to a whisper. The boy sat as if frozen.
"I saw nothing but that light then as I drew blood. And then this next thing, 
this next thing was . . . sound. A dull roar at first and then a pounding like 
the pounding of a drum, growing louder and louder, as if some enormous creature 
were coming up on one slowly through a dark and alien forest, pounding as he 
came, a huge drum. And then there came the pounding of another drum, as if 
another giant were coming yards behind him, and each giant, intent on his own 
drum, gave no notice to the rhythm of the other. The sound grew louder and 
louder until it seemed to fill not just my hearing but all my senses, to be 
throbbing in my lips and fingers, in the flesh of my temples, in my veins. Above 
all, in my veins, drum and then the other drum; and then Lestat pulled his wrist 
free suddenly, and I opened my eyes and checked myself in a moment of reaching 
for his wrist, grabbing it, forcing it back to my mouth at all costs; I checked 
myself because I realized that the drum was my heart, and the second drum had 
been his." The vampire sighed. "Do you understand?"
The boy began to speak, and then he shook his head. "No . . I mean, I do," he 
said. "I mean, I . . .'
"Of course," said the vampire, looking away.
"Wait, wait!" said the boy in a welter of excitement. "The tape is almost gone. 
I have to turn it over." The vampire watched patiently as he changed it.
"What happened then?" the boy asked. His face was moist, and he wiped it 
hurriedly with his handkerchief.
"I saw as a- vampire," said -the vampire, his voice now slightly detached. It 
seemed almost distracted. Then he drew himself up. "Lestat was standing again at 
the foot of the stairs, and I saw him as I could not possibly have seen him 
before. He had seemed white to me before, starkly white, so that in the night he 
was almost luminous; and now I saw him filled with his own life and own blood: 
he was radiant, not luminous. And then I saw that not only Lestat had changed, 
but all things had changed.
"It was as if I had only just been able to see colors and shapes for the first 
time. I was so enthralled with the buttons on Lestat's black coat that I looked 
at nothing else for a long time. Then Lestat began to laugh, and I heard his 
laughter as I had never heard anything before. His heart I still heard like the 
beating of a drum, and now came this metallic laughter. It was confusing, each 
sound running into the next sound, like the mingling reverberations of bells, 
until I learned to separate the sounds, and then they overlapped, each soft but 
distinct, increasing but discrete, peals of laughter." The vampire smiled with 
delight. "Peals of bells.
" `Stop looking at my buttons,' Lestat said. `Go out there into the trees. Rid 
yourself of all the human waste in your body, and don't fall so madly in love 
with the night that you lose your ways'
"That, of course, was a wise command. When I saw the moon on the flagstones, I 
became so enamored with it that I must have spent an hour there. I passed my 
brother's oratory without so much as a thought of him, and standing among the 
cottonwood and oaks, I heard the night as if it were a chorus of whispering 
women, all beckoning me to their breasts. As for my body, it was not yet totally 
converted, and as soon as I became the least accustomed to the sounds and 
sights, it began to ache. All my human fluids were being forced out of me. I was 
dying as a human, yet completely alive as a vampire; and with my awakened 
senses, I had to preside over the death of my body with a certain discomfort and 
then, finally, fear. I ran back up the steps to the parlor, where Lestat was 
already at work on the plantation papers, going over the expenses and profits 
for the last year. `You're a rich man,' he said to me when I came in. 
`Something's happening to me,' I shouted.
" `You're dying, that's all; don't be a fool. Don't you have any oil lamps? All 
this money and you can't afford whale oil except for that lantern. Bring me that 
lantern.'
" `Dying!' I shouted. `Dying!'
" `It happens to everyone,' he persisted, refusing to help me. As I look back on 
this, I still despise him for it. Not because I was afraid, but because he might 
have drawn my attention to these changes with reverence. He might have calmed me 
and told me I might watch my death with the same fascination with which I had 
watched and felt the night. But he didn't. Lestat was never the vampire I am. 
Not at all." The vampire did not say this boastfully. He said it as if he would 
truly have had it otherwise.
"Alors," he sighed. "I was dying fast, which meant that my capacity for fear was 
diminishing as rapidly. I simply regret I was not more attentive to the process. 
Lestat was being a perfect idiot. `Oh, for the love of hell!' he began shouting. 
`Do you realize I've made no provision for you? What a fool I am.' I was tempted 
to say, `Yes, you are,' but I didn't. `You'll have to bed down with me this 
morning. I haven't prepared you a coffin.' "
The vampire laughed. "The coffin struck such a chord of terror in me I think it 
absorbed all the capacity for terror I had left. Then came only my mild alarm at 
having to share a coffin with Lestat. He was in his father's bedroom meantime, 
telling the old man
good-bye, that he would return in the morning. But where do you go, why must you 
live by such a schedule!' the old man demanded, and Lestat became impatient. 
Before this, he'd been gracious to the old man, almost to the point of sickening 
one, but now he became a bully. `I take care of you, don't I? I've put a better 
roof over your head than you ever put over mine! If I want to sleep all day and 
drink all night, I'll do it, damn you!' The old man started to whine. Only my 
peculiar state of emotions and most unusual feeling of exhaustion kept me from 
disapproving. I was watching the scene through the open door, enthralled with 
the colors of the counterpane and the positive riot of color in the old man's 
face. His blue veins pulsed beneath his pink and grayish flesh. I found even the 
yellow of his teeth appealing to me; and I became almost hypnotized by the 
quivering of his lip. `Such a son, such a son,' he said, never suspecting, of 
course, the true nature of his son. `All right, then, go. I know you keep a 
woman somewhere; you go to see her as soon as her husband leaves in the morning. 
Give me my rosary. What's happened to my rosary?' Lestat said something 
blasphemous and gave him the rosary. . . ."
"But . ." the boy started.
"Yes?" said the vampire. "I'm afraid I don't allow you to ask enough questions."
"I was going to ask, rosaries have crosses on them, don't they?"
"Oh, the rumor about crosses!" the vampire laughed "You refer to our being 
afraid of crosses?"
"Unable to look on them, I thought; ' said the boy.
"Nonsense, my friend, sheer nonsense. I can look on anything I like. And I 
rather like looking on crucifixes in particular."
"And what about the rumor about keyholes? That you can . . . become steam and go 
through them."
"I wish I could," laughed the vampire. "How positively delightful. I should like 
to pass through all manner of different keyholes and feel the tickle of their 
peculiar shapes. No." He shook his head. "That is, how would you say today . . . 
bullshit?"
The boy laughed despite himself. Then his face grew serious.
"You mustn't be so shy with me," the vampire said. "What is it?"
"The story about stakes through the heart," said the boy, his cheeks coloring 
slightly.
"The same," said the vampire. "Bull-shit," he said, carefully articulating both 
syllables, so that the boy smiled. "No magical power whatsoever. Why don't you 
smoke one of your cigarettes? I see you have them in your shirt pocket."
"Oh, thank you," the boy said, as if it were a marvelous suggestion. But once he 
had the cigarette to his lips, his hands were trembling so badly that he mangled 
the first fragile book match.
"Allow me," said the vampire. And, taking the book, he quickly put a lighted 
match to the boy's cigarette. The boy inhaled, his eyes on the vampire's 
fingers. Now the vampire withdrew across the table with a soft rustling of 
garments. "There's an ashtray on the basin," he said, and the boy moved 
nervously to get it. He stared at the few butts in it for a moment, and then, 
seeing the small waste basket beneath, he emptied the ashtray and quickly set it 
on the table. His fingers left damp marks on the cigarette when he put it down. 
"Is this your room?" he asked.
"No," answered the vampire. "Just a room."
"What happened then?" the boy asked. The vampire appeared to be watching the 
smoke gather beneath the overhead bulb.
"Ah . . . we went back to New Orleans posthaste," he said. "Lestat had his 
coffin in a miserable room near the ramparts."
"And you did get into the coffin?"
"I had no choice. I begged Lestat to let me stay in the closet, but he laughed, 
astonished. `Don't you know what you are?' he asked. `But is it magical? Must it 
have this shape?' I pleaded. Only to hear him laugh again. I couldn't bear the 
idea; but as we argued, I realized I had no real fear. It was a strange 
realization. All my life I'd feared closed places. Born and bred in French 
houses with lofty ceilings and floor-length windows, I had a dread of being 
enclosed. I felt uncomfortable even in the confessional in church. It was a 
normal enough fear. And now I realized as I protested to Lestat, I did not 
actually feel this anymore. I was simply remembering it. Hanging on to it from 
habit, from a deficiency of ability to recognize my present and exhilarating 
freedom. `You're carrying on badly,' Lestat said finally. `And it's almost dawn. 
I should let you die. You will die, you know. The sun will destroy the blood 
I've given you, in every tissue, every vein. But you shouldn't be feeling this 
fear at all. I think you're like a man who loses an arm or a leg and keeps 
insisting that he can feel pain where the arm or leg used to be.' Well, that was 
positively the most intelligent and useful thing Lestat ever said in my 
presence, and it brought me around at once. `Now, I'm getting into the coffin,' 
he finally said to me in his most disdainful tone, `and you will get in on top 
of me if you know what's good for you.' And I did. I lay face-down on him, 
utterly confused by my absence of dread and filled with a distaste for being so 
close to him, handsome and intriguing though he was. And he shut the lid. Then I 
asked him if I was .completely dead. My body was tingling and itching all over. 
`No, you're not then,' he said. `When you are, you'll only hear and see it 
changing and feel nothing. You should be dead by tonight. Go to sleep."'
"Was he right? Were you . . . dead when you woke up?"
"Yes, changed, I should say. As obviously I am alive. My body was dead. It was 
some time before it became absolutely cleansed of the fluids and matter it no 
longer needed, but it was dead. And with the realization of it came another 
stage in my divorce from human emotions. The first thing which became apparent 
to me, even while Lestat and I were loading the coffin into a hearse and 
stealing another coffin from a mortuary, was that I did not like Lestat at all. 
I was far from being his equal yet, but I was infinitely closer to him than I 
had been before the death of my body. I can't really make this clear to you for 
the obvious reason that you are now as I was before my body died.
You cannot understand. But before I died, Lestat was absolutely the most 
overwhelming experience I'd ever had. Your cigarette has become one long 
cylindrical ash."
"Oh!" The boy quickly ground the filter into the glass. "You mean that when the 
gap was closed between you, he lost his . . . spell?" he asked, his eyes quickly 
fixed on the vampire, his hands now producing a cigarette and match much more 
easily than before.
"Yes, that's correct," said the vampire with obvious pleasure. "The trip back to 
Pointe du Lac was thrilling. And the constant chatter of Lestat was positively 
the most boring and disheartening thing I experienced. Of course as I said, I 
was far from being his equal. I had my dead limbs to contend with . . . to use 
his comparison. And I learned that on that very night, when I had to make my 
first kill."
The vampire reached across the table now and gently brushed an ash from the 
boy's lapel, and the boy stared at his withdrawing hand in alarm. "Excuse me," 
said the vampire. "I didn't mean to frighten you."
"Excuse me," said the boy. "I just got the impression suddenly that your arm was 
. . . abnormally long. You reach so far without moving!"
"No," said the vampire, resting his hands again on his crossed knees. "I moved 
forward much too fast for you to see. It was an illusion."
"You moved forward? But you didn't. You were sitting just as you are now, with 
your back against the chair."
"No," repeated the vampire firmly. "I moved forward as I told you. Here, I'll do 
it again." And he did it again, and the boy stared with the same mixture of 
confusion and fear. "You still didn't see it," said the vampire. "But, you see, 
if you look at my outstretched arm now, it's really not remarkably long at all." 
And he raised his arm, first finger pointing heavenward as if he were an angel 
about to give the Word of the Lord. "You have experienced a fundamental 
difference between the way you see and I see. My gesture appeared slow and 
somewhat languid to me. And the sound of my finger brushing your coat was quite 
audible. Well, I didn't mean to frighten you, I confess. But perhaps you can see 
from this that my return to Pointe du Lac was a feast of new experiences, the 
mere swaying of a tree branch in the wind a delight."
"Yes," said the boy; but he was still visibly shaken. The vampire eyed him for a 
moment, and then he said, "I was telling you . . ."
"About your first kill," said the boy.
"Yes. I should say first, however, that the plantation was in a state of 
pandemonium. The overseer's body had been found and so had the blind old man in 
the master bedroom, and no one could explain the blind old man's presence. And 
no one had been able to find me in New Orleans. My sister had contacted the 
police, and several of them were at Pointe du Lac when I arrived. It was already 
quite dark, naturally, and Lestat quickly explained to me that I must not let 
the police see me in even minimal light, especially not with my body in its 
present remarkable state; so I talked to them in the avenue of oaks before the 
plantation house, ignoring their requests that we go inside. I explained I'd 
been to Pointe du Lac the night before and the blind old man was my guest. As 
for the overseer, he had not been here, but had gone to New Orleans on business.
"After that was settled, during which my new detachment served me admirably, I 
had the problem of the plantation itself. My slaves were in a state of complete 
confusion, and no work had been done all day. We had a large plant then for the 
making of the indigo dye, and the overseer's management had been most important. 
But I had several extremely intelligent slaves who might have done his job just 
as well a long time before, if I had recognized their intelligence and not 
feared their African appearance and manner. I studied them clearly now and gave 
the management of things over to them. To the best, I gave the overseer's house 
on a promise. Two of the young women were brought back into the house from the 
fields to care for Lestat's father, and I told them I wanted as much privacy as 
possible and they would all of them be rewarded not only for service but for 
leaving me and Lestat absolutely alone. I did not realize at the time that these 
slaves would be the first, and possibly the only ones, to ever suspect that 
Lestat and I were not ordinary creatures. I failed to realize that their 
experience with the supernatural was far greater than that of white men. In my 
own inexperience I still thought of them as childlike savages barely 
domesticated by slavery. I made a bad mistake. But let me keep to my story. I 
was going to tell you about my first kill. Lestat bungled it with his 
characteristic lack of common sense."
"Bungled it?" asked the boy.
"I should never have started with human beings. But this was something I had to 
learn by myself. Lestat had us plunge headlong into the swamps right after the 
police and the slaves were settled. It was very late, and the slave cabins were 
completely dark. Rye soon lost sight of the lights of Pointe du Lac altogether, 
and I became very agitated. It was the same thing again: remembered fears, 
confusion. Lestat, had he any native intelligence, might have explained things 
to me patiently and gently-that I had no need to fear the swamps, that ;o snakes 
and insects I was utterly invulnerable, and that I must concentrate on my new 
ability to see in total darkness. Instead, he harassed me with condemnations. He 
was concerned only with our victims, with finishing my initiation and getting on 
with it.
"And when we finally came upon our victims, he rushed me into action. They were 
a small camp of runaway slaves. Lestat had visited them before and picked off 
perhaps a fourth of their number by watching from the dark for one of them to 
leave the fire, or by taking them in their sleep. They knew absolutely nothing 
of Lestat's presence. We had to watch for well over an hour before one of the 
men, they were all men, finally left the clearing and came just a few paces into 
the trees. He unhooked his pants now and attended to an ordinary physical 
necessity, and as he turned to go, Lestat shook me and said, `Take him,' " The 
vampire smiled at the boy's wide eyes. "I think I was about as horrorstruck as 
you would be," he said. "But I didn't know then that I might kill animals 
instead of humans. I said quickly I could not possibly take him. And the slave 
heard me speak. He tamed, his back to the distant fire, and peered into the 
dark. Then quickly and silently, he drew a long knife out of his belt. He was 
naked except for the pants and the belt, a tall, strong-armed, sleek young man. 
He said something in the French patois, and then he stepped forward. I realized 
that, though I saw him clearly in the dark, he could not see us. Lestat stepped 
in back of him with a swiftness that baffled me and got a hold around his neck 
while he pinned his left arm. The slave cried out and tried to throw Lestat off. 
He sank his teeth now, and the slave froze as if from snakebite. He sank to his 
knees, and Lestat fed fast as the other slaves came running. `You sicken me,' he 
said when he got back to me. It was as if we were black insects utterly 
camouflaged in the night, watching the slaves move, oblivious to us, discover 
the wounded man, drag him back, fan out in the foliage searching for the 
attacker. `Come on, we have to get another one before they all return to camp,' 
he said. And quickly we set off after one man who was separated from the others. 
I was still terribly agitated, convinced I couldn't bring myself to attack and 
feeling no urge to do so. There were many things, as I mention, which Lestat 
might have said and done. He might have made the experience rich in so many 
ways. But he did not."
"What could he have done?" the boy asked. "What do you mean?"
"Killing is no ordinary act," said the vampire. "One doesn't simply glut oneself 
on blood." He shook his head. "It is the experience of another's life for 
certain, and often the experience of the loss of that life through the blood, 
slowly. It is again and again the experience of that loss of my own life, which 
I experienced when I sucked the blood from Lestat's wrist and felt his heart 
pound with my heart. It is again and again a celebration of that experience; 
because for vampires that is the ultimate experience." He said this most 
seriously, as if he were arguing with someone who held a different view. "I 
don't think Lestat ever appreciated that, though how he could not, I don't know. 
Let me say he appreciated something, but very little, I think, of what there is 
to know. In any event, he took no pains to remind me now of what I'd felt when I 
clamped onto his wrist for life itself and wouldn't let it go; or to pick and 
choose a place for me where I might experience my first kill with some measure 
of quiet and dignity. He rushed headlong through the encounter as if it were 
something to put behind us as quickly as possible, like so many yards of the 
road. Once he had caught the slave, he gagged him and held him, baring his neck. 
`Do it,' he said. `You can't turn back now.' Overcome with revulsion and weak 
with frustration, I obeyed. I knelt beside the bent, struggling man and, 
clamping both my hands on his shoulders, I went into his neck. My teeth had only 
just begun to change, and I had to tear his flesh, not puncture it; but once the 
wound was made, the blood flowed. And once that happened, once I was locked to 
it, drinking . . . all else vanished.
"Lestat and the swamp and the noise of the distant camp meant nothing. Lestat 
might have been an insect, buzzing, lighting, then vanishing m significance. The 
sucking mesmerized me; the warm struggling of the man was. soothing to the 
tension of my hands; and there came the beating of the drum again, which was the 
drumbeat of his heart-only this time it beat in perfect rhythm with the drumbeat 
of my own heart, the two resounding in every fiber of my being, until the beat 
began to grow slower and slower, so that each was a soft rumble that threatened 
to go on without end. I was drowsing, falling into weightlessness; and then 
Lestat pulled me back. `He's dead, you idiot!' he said with his characteristic 
charm and tact. `You don't drink after they're dead! Understand that!' I was in 
a frenzy for a moment, not myself, insisting to him that the man's heart still 
beat, and I was in an agony to clamp onto him again. I ran my hands over his 
chest, then grabbed at his wrists. I would have cut into his wrist if Lestat 
hadn't pulled me to my feet and slapped my face. This slap was astonishing. It 
was not painful in the ordinary way. It was a sensational shock of another sort, 
a rapping of the senses, so that I spun in confusion and found myself helpless 
and staring, my back against a cypress, the night pulsing with insects in my 
ears. `You'll die if you do that,' Lestat was saying. `He'll suck you right down 
into death with him if you cling to him in death. And now you've drunk too much, 
besides; you'll be ill.' His voice grated on me. I had the urge to throw myself 
on him suddenly, but I was feeling just what he'd said. There was a grinding 
pain in my stomach, as if some whirlpool there were sucking my insides into 
itself. It was the blood passing too rapidly into my own blood, but I didn't 
know it. Lestat moved through the night now like a cat and I followed him, my 
head throbbing, this pain in my stomach no better when we reached the house of 
Pointe du Lac.
"As we sat at the table in the parlor, Lestat dealing a game of solitaire on the 
polished wood, I sat there staring at him with contempt. He was mumbling 
nonsense. I would get used to killing, he said; it would be nothing. I must not 
allow myself to be shaken. I was reacting too much as if the `mortal coil' had 
not been shaken off. I would become accustomed to things all too quickly. 'Do 
you think so?' I asked him finally. I really had no interest in his answer. I 
understood now the difference between us. For me the experience of killing had 
been cataclysmic. So had that of sucking Lestat's wrist. These experiences so 
overwhelmed and so changed my view of everything around me, from the picture of 
my brother on the parlor wall to the sight of a single star in the topmost pane 
of the French window, that I could not imagine another vampire taking them for 
granted. I was altered, permanently; I knew it. And what I felt, most 
profoundly, for everything, even the sound of the playing cards being laid down 
one by one upon the shining rows of the solitaire, was respect. Lestat felt the 
opposite. Or he felt nothing. He was the sow's ear out of which nothing fine 
could be made. As boring as a mortal, as trivial and unhappy as a mortal, he 
chattered over the game, belittling my experience, utterly locked against the 
possibility of any experience of his own. By morning, I realized that I was his 
complete superior and I had been sadly cheated in having him for a teacher. He 
must guide me through the necessary lessons, if there were any more real 
lessons, and I must tolerate in him a frame of mind which was blasphemous to 
life itself. I felt cold towards him. I had no contempt in superiority. Only a 
hunger for new experience, for that which was beautiful and as devastating as my 
kill. And I saw that if I were to maximize every experience available to me, I 
must exert my own powers over my learning. Lestat was of no use.
"It was well past midnight when I finally rose out of the chair and went out on 
the gallery. The moon was large over the cypresses, and the candlelight poured 
from the open doors. The thick plastered pillars and walls of the house had been 
freshly whitewashed, the floorboards freshly swept, and a summer rain had left 
the night clean and sparkling with drops of water. I leaned against the end 
pillar of the gallery, my head touching the soft tendrils of a jasmine which 
grew there in constant battle with a wisteria, and I thought of what lay before 
me throughout the world and throughout time, and resolved to go about it 
delicately and reverently, learning that from each thing which would take me 
best to another. What this meant, I wasn't sure myself. Do you understand me 
when I say I did not wish to rush headlong into experience, that what I'd felt 
as a vampire was far too powerful to be wasted?"
"Yes," said the boy eagerly. "It sounds as if it was like being in love."
The vampire's eyes gleamed. "That's correct. It is like love," he smiled. "And I 
tell you my frame of mind that night so you can know there are profound 
differences between vampires, and how I came to take a different approach from 
Lestat. You must understand I did not snub him because he did not appreciate his 
experience. I simply could not understand how such feelings could be wasted. But 
then Lestat did something which was to show me a way to go about my learning.
"He had more than a casual appreciation of the wealth at Pointe du Lac. He'd 
been much pleased by the beauty of the china used for his father's supper; and 
he liked the feel of the velvet drapes, and he traced the patterns of the 
carpets with his toe. And now he took from one of the china closets a crystal 
glass and said, `I do miss glasses.' Only he said this with an impish delight 
that caused me to study him with a hard eye. I disliked him intensely! `I want 
to show you a little trick,' he said. `That is, if you like glasses.' And after 
setting it on the card table he came out on the gallery where I stood and 
changed his manner again into that of a stalking animal, eyes piercing the dark 
beyond the lights of the house, peering down under the arching branches of the 
oaks. In an instant, he had vaulted the railing and dropped softly on the dirt 
below, and then lunged into the blackness to catch something in both his hands. 
When he stood before me with it, I gasped to see it was a rat. `Don't be such a 
damned idiot,' he said. `Haven't you ever seen a rat?' It was a huge, struggling 
field rat with a long tail. He held its neck so it couldn't bite. `Rats can be 
quite nice,' he said. And he took the rat to the wine glass, slashed its throat, 
and filled the glass rapidly with blood. The rat then went hurtling over the 
gallery railing, and Lestat held the wine glass to the candle triumphantly. `You 
may well have to live off rats from time to time, so wipe that expression off 
your face,' he said. `Rats, chickens, cattle. Traveling by ship, you damn well 
better live off rats, if you don't wish to cause such a panic on board that they 
search your coffin. You damn well better keep the ship clean of rats.' And then 
he sipped the blood as delicately as if it were burgundy. He made a slight face. 
`It gets cold so fast.'
" `Do you mean, then, we can live from animals?' I asked.
" `Yes.' He drank it all down and then casually threw the glass at the 
fireplace. I stared at the fragments. `You don't mind, do you?' He gestured to 
the broken glass with a sarcastic smile. `I surely hope you don't, because 
there's nothing much you can do about it if you do mind.'
" `I can throw you and your father out of Pointe du Lac, if I mind,' I said. I 
believe this was my first show of temper.
" 'Why would you do that?' he asked with mock alarm. `You don't know everything 
yet . . . do you?' He was laughing then and walking slowly about the room. He 
ran his fingers over the satin finish of the spinet. `Do you play?' he asked.
"I said something like, `Don't touch it!' and he laughed at me. `I'll touch it 
if I like!' he said. `You don't know, for example, all the ways you can die. And 
dying now would be such a calamity, wouldn't it?'
" `There must be someone else in the world to teach me these things,' I said. 
`Certainly you're not the only vampire! And your father, he's perhaps seventy. 
You couldn't have been a vampire long, so someone must have instructed you. . .
" `And do you think you can find other vampires by yourself? They might see you 
coming, my friend, but you won't see them. No, I don't think you have much 
choice about things at this point, friend. I'm your teacher and you need me, and 
there isn't much you can do about it either way. And we both have people to 
provide for. My father needs a doctor, and then there is the matter of your 
mother and sister. Don't get any mortal notions about telling them you are a 
vampire. Just provide for them and for my father, which means that tomorrow 
night you had better kill fast and then attend to the business of your 
plantation. Now to bed. We both sleep in the same room; it makes for far less 
risk.'
" 'No, you secure the bedroom for yourself,' I said. `I've no intention of 
staying in the same room with you.'
"He became furious. `Don't do anything stupid, Louis. I warn you. There's 
nothing you can do to defend yourself once the sun rises, nothing. Separate 
rooms mean separate security. Double precautions and double chance of notice.' 
He then said a score of things to frighten me into complying, but he might as 
well have been talking to the walls. I watched him intently, but I didn't listen 
to him. He appeared frail and stupid to me, a man made of dried twigs with a 
thin, carping voice. `I sleep alone,' I said, and gently put my hand around the 
candle flames one by one. `It's almost morning!' he insisted.
" `So lock yourself in,' I said, embracing my coffin, hoisting it and carrying 
it down the brick stairs. I could hear the locks snapping on the French doors 
above, the swoosh of the drapes. The sky was pale but still sprinkled with 
stars, and another light rain blew now on the breeze from the river, speckling 
the flagstones. I opened the door of my brother's oratory, shoving back the 
roses and thorns which had almost sealed it, and set the coffin on the stone 
floor before the priedieu. I could almost. make out the images of the saints on 
the walls. `Paul,' I said softly, addressing my brother, `for the first time in 
my life I feel nothing for you, nothing for your death; arid for the first time 
I feel everything for you, feel the sorrow of your loss as if I never before 
knew feeling.' You see . . . "
The vampire tuned to the boy. "For the first time now I was fully and completely 
a vampire. I shut the wood blinds flat upon the small barred windows and bolted 
the door. Then I climbed into the satin-lined coffin, barely able to see the 
gleam of cloth in the darkness, and locked myself in. That is how I became a 
vampire."
 And There You Were," said the boy after a pause, "with another vampire you 
hated."
"But I had to stay with him," answered the vampire. "As I've told you, he had me 
at a great disadvantage.
He hinted there was much I didn't know and must know and that he alone could 
tell me. But in fact, the main part of what he did teach me was practical and 
not so difficult to figure out for oneself. How we might travel, for instance, 
by ship, having our coffins transported for us as though they contained the 
remains of loved ones being sent here or there for burial; how no one would dare 
to epee such a coffin, and we might rise from it at night to clean the ship of 
rats-things of this nature, And then there were the shops and businessmen he 
knew who admitted us well after hours to outfit us in the finest Paris fashions, 
and those agents willing to transact financial matters in restaurants and 
cabarets. And in all of these mundane matters, Lestat was an adequate teacher. 
What manner of man he'd been in life, I couldn't tell and didn't care; but he 
was for all appearances of the same class now as myself, which meant little to 
me, except that it made our lives run a little more smoothly than they might 
have otherwise. He had impeccable taste, though my library to him was a `pile of 
dust,' and he seemed more than once to be infuriated by the sight of my reading 
a book or writing some observations in a journal. `That mortal nonsense,' he 
would say to me, while at the same time spending so much of my money to 
splendidly furnish Pointe du Lac, that even I, who cared nothing for the money, 
was forced to wince. And in entertaining visitors at Pointe du Lac-those hapless 
travelers who came up the river road by horseback or carriage begging 
accommodations for the night, sporting letters of introduction from other 
planters or officials in New Orleans.-to these he was so gentle and polite that 
it made things far easier for me, who found myself hopelessly locked to him and 
jarred over and over by his viciousness."
"But he didn't harm these men?" asked the boy.
"Oh yes' often, he did. But I'll tell you a little secret if I may, which 
applies not only to vampires, but to generals, soldiers, and kings. Most of us 
would much rather see somebody die than be the object of rudeness under our 
roofs. Strange . . . yes. But very true, I assure you. That Lestat hunted for 
mortals every night, I knew. But had he been savage and ugly to my family, my 
guests, and my slaves, I couldn't have endured it. He was not. He seemed 
particularly to delight in the visitors. But he said we must spare no expense 
where our families were concerned. And he seemed to me to push luxury upon his 
father to an almost ludicrous point. The old blind man must be told constantly 
how fine and expensive were his bed jackets and robes and what imported 
draperies had just been fixed to his bed and what French and Spanish wines we 
had in the cellar and how much the plantation yielded even in bad years when the 
coast talked of abandoning the indigo production altogether and going into 
sugar. But then at other times he would bully the old man, as I mentioned. He 
would erupt into such rage that the old man whimpered like a child. `Don't I 
take care of you in baronial splendor!' Lestat would shout at him. `Don't I 
provide for your every want! Stop whining to me about going to church or old 
friends! Such nonsense. Your old friends are dead. Why don't you die and leave 
me and my bankroll in peace!' The old man would cry softly that these things 
meant so little to him in old age. He would have been content on his little farm 
forever. I wanted often to ask him later, `Where wag this farm? From where did 
you come to Louisiana?' to get some clue to that place where Lestat might have 
known another vampire. But I didn't dare to bring these things up, lest the old 
man start crying and Lestat become enraged. But these fits were no more frequent 
than periods of near obsequious kindness when Lestat would bring his father 
supper on a tray and feed him patiently while talking of the weather and the New 
Orleans news and the activities of my mother and sister. It was obvious that a 
great gulf existed between father and son, both in education and refinement, but 
how it came about, I could not quite guess. And from this whole matter, I 
achieved a somewhat consistent detachment.
"Existence, as I've said, was possible. There was always the promise behind his 
mocking smile that he knew great things or terrible things, had commerce with 
levels of darkness I could not possibly guess at. And all the time, he belittled 
me and attacked me for my love of the senses, my reluctance to kill, and the 
near swoon which killing could produce in me. He laughed uproariously when I 
discovered that I could see myself in a mirror and that crosses had no effect 
upon me, and would taunt me with sealed lips when I asked about God or the 
devil. `I'd like to meet the devil some night,' he said once with a malignant 
smile. `I'd chase him from here to the wilds of the Pacific. I am the devil.' 
And when I was aghast at this, he went into peals of laughter. But what happened 
was simply that in my distaste for him I came to ignore and suspect him, and yet 
to study him with a detached fascination. Sometimes I'd find myself staring at 
his wrist from which rd drawn my vampire life, and I would fall into such a 
stillness that my mind seemed to leave my body or rather my body to become my 
mind; and then he would see me and stare at me with a stubborn ignorance of what 
I felt and longed to know and, reaching over, shake me roughly out of it. I bore 
this with an overt detachment unknown to me in mortal life and came to 
understand this as a part of vampire nature: that I might sit at home at Pointe 
du Lac and think for hours of my brother's mortal life and see it short and 
rounded in unfathomable darkness, understanding now the vain and senseless 
wasting passion with which rd mourned his loss and turned on other mortals like 
a maddened animal. All that confusion was then like dancers frenzied in a fog; 
and now, now in this strange vampire nature, I felt a profound sadness. But I 
did not brood over this. Let me not give you that impression, for brooding would 
have been to me the most terrible waste; but rather I looked around me at all 
the mortals that I knew and saw all life as precious, condemning all fruitless 
guilt and passion that would let it slip through the fingers like sand. It was 
only now as a vampire that I did come to know my sister, forbidding her the 
plantation for the city life which she so needed in order to know her own time 
of life and her own beauty and come to marry, not brood for our lost brother or 
my going away or become a nursemaid for our mother. And I provided for them all 
they might need or want, finding even the most trivial request worth my 
immediate attention. My sister laughed at the transformation in me when we would 
meet at night and I would take her from our flat out the narrow wooden streets 
to walk along the tree-lined levee in the moonlight, savoring the orange 
blossoms and the caressing warmth, talking for hours of her most secret thoughts 
and dreams, those little fantasies she dared to tell no one and would even 
whisper to me when we sat in the dim lit parlor entirely alone. And I would see 
her sweet and palpable before me, a shimmering, precious creature soon to grow 
old, soon to die, soon to lose these moments that in their tangibility promised 
to us, wrongly . . . wrongly, an immortality. As if it were our very birthright, 
which we could not come to grasp the meaning of until this time of middle life 
when we looked on only as many years ahead as already lay behind us. When every 
moment, every moment must be first known and then savored.
"It was detachment that made this possible, a sublime loneliness with which 
Lestat and I moved through the world of mortal men. And all material troubles 
passed from us. I should tell you the practical nature of it.
"Lestat had always known how to steal from victims chosen for sumptuous dress 
and other promising signs of extravagance. But the great problems of shelter and 
secrecy had been for him a terrible struggle. I suspected that beneath his 
gentleman's veneer he was painfully ignorant of the most simple financial 
matters. But I was not. And so he could acquire cash at any moment and I could 
invest it. If he were not picking the pocket of a dead man in an alley, he was 
at the greatest gambling tables in the richest salons of the city, using his 
vampire keenness to suck gold and dollars and deeds of property from young 
planters' sons who found him deceptive in his friendship and alluring in his 
charm. But this had never given him the life he wanted, and so for that he had 
ushered me into the preternatural world that he might acquire an investor and 
manager for whom these skills of mortal life became most valuable in this life 
after.
"But, let me describe New Orleans, as it was then, and as it was to become, so 
you can understand how simple our lives were. There was no city in America like 
New Orleans. It was filled not only with the French and Spanish of all classes 
who had formed in part its peculiar aristocracy, but later with immigrants of 
all kinds, the Irish and the German in particular. Then there were not only the 
black slaves, yet unhomogenized and fantastical in their different tribal garb 
and manners, but the great growing class of the free people of color, those 
marvelous people of our mixed blood and that of the islands, who produced a 
magnificent and unique caste of craftsmen, artists, poets, and renowned feminine 
beauty. And then there were the Indians, who covered the levee on summer days 
selling herbs and crafted wares. And drifting through all, through this medley 
of languages and colors, were the people of the port, the sailors of ships, who 
came in great waves to spend their money in the cabarets, to buy for the night 
the beautiful women both dark and light, to dine on the best of Spanish and 
French cooking and drink the imported wines of the world. Then add to these, 
within years after my transformation, the Americans, who built the city up river 
from the old French Quarter with magnificent Grecian houses which gleamed in the 
moonlight like temples. And, of course, the planters, always the planters, 
coming to town with their families in shining landaus to buy evening gowns and 
silver and gems, to crowd the narrow streets on the way to the old French Opera 
House and the Theatre d'Orleans and the St. Louis Cathedral, from whose open 
doors came the chants of High Mass over the crowds of the Place d'Armes on 
Sundays, over the noise and bickering of the French Market, over the silent, 
ghostly drift of the ships along the raised waters of the Mississippi, which 
flowed against the levee above the ground of New Orleans itself, so that the 
ships appeared to float against the sky.
"This was New Orleans, a magical and magnificent place to live. In which a 
vampire, richly dressed and gracefully walking through the pools of light of one 
gas lamp after another might attract no more notice in the evening than hundreds 
of other exotic creatures -if he attracted any at all, if anyone stopped to 
whisper behind a fan, `That man . . . how pale, how he gleams . . . how he 
moves. It's not natural!' A city in which a vampire might be gone before the 
words had even passed the lips, seeking out the alleys in which he could see 
like a cat, the darkened bars in which sailors slept with their heads on the 
table, great high-ceilinged hotel rooms where a lone figure might sit, her feet 
upon an embroidered cushion, her legs covered with a lace counterpane, her head 
bent under the tarnished light of a single candle, never seeing the great shadow 
move across the plaster flowers of the ceiling, never seeing the long white 
finger reached to press the fragile flame.
"Remarkable, if for nothing else, because of this, that all of those men and 
women who stayed for any reason left behind them some monument, some structure 
of marble and brick and stone that still stands; so that even when the gas lamps 
went out and the planes came in and the office buildings crowded the blocks of 
Canal Street, something irreducible of beauty and romance remained; not in every 
street perhaps, but in so many that the landscape is for me the landscape of 
those times always, and walking now in the starlit streets of the Quarter or the 
Garden District I am in those times again. I suppose that is the nature of the 
monument. Be it a small house or a mansion of Corinthian columns and 
wrought-iron lace. The monument does not say that this or that man walked here. 
No, that what he felt in one time in one spot continues. The moon that rose over 
New Orleans then still rises. As long as the monuments stand, it still rises. 
The feeling, at least here . . . and there . . . it remains the same."
The vampire appeared sad. He sighed, as if he doubted what he had just said. 
"What was it?" he asked suddenly as if he were slightly tired. "Yes, money. 
Lestat and I had to make money. And I was telling you that he could steal. But 
it was investment afterwards that mattered. What we accumulated we must use. But 
I go ahead of myself. I killed animals. But I'll get to that in a moment. Lestat 
killed humans all the time, sometimes two or three a night, sometimes more. He 
would drink from one just enough to satisfy a momentary thirst, and then go on 
to another. The better the human, as he would say in his vulgar way, the more he 
liked it. A fresh young girl, that was his favorite food the first of the 
evening; but the triumphant kill for Lestat was a young man. A young man around 
your age would have appealed to him in particular."
"Me?" the boy whispered. He had leaned forward on his elbows to peer into the 
vampire's eyes, and now he drew up.
"Yes," the vampire went on, as if he hadn't observed the boy's change of 
expression. "You see, they represented the greatest loss to Lestat, because they 
stood on the threshold of the maximum possibility of life. Of course, Lestat 
didn't understand this himself. I came to understand it. Lestat understood 
nothing.
"I shall give you a perfect example of what Lestat liked. Up the river from us 
was the Freniere plantation, a magnificent spread of land which had great hopes 
of making a fortune in sugar, just shortly after the refining process had been 
invented. I presume you know sugar was refined in Louisiana. There is something 
perfect and ironic about it, this land which I loved producing refined sugar. I 
mean this more unhappily than I think you know. This refined sugar is a poison. 
It was like the essence of life in New Orleans, so sweet that it can be fatal, 
so richly enticing that all other values are forgotten . . . . But as I was 
saying up river from us lived the Frenieres, a great old French family which had 
produced in this generation five young women and one young man. Now, three of 
the young women were destined not to marry, but two were young enough still and 
all depended upon the young man. He was to manage the plantation as I bad done 
for my mother and sister; he was to negotiate marriages, to put together dowries 
when the entire fortune of the place rode precariously on the next year's sugar 
crop; he was to bargain, fight, and keep at a distance the entire material world 
for the world of Freniere. Lestat decided he wanted him. And when fate alone 
nearly cheated Lestat, he went wild. He risked his own life to get the Freniere 
boy, who had become involved in a duel. He had insulted a young Spanish Creole 
at a ball. The whole thing was nothing, really; but like most young Creoles this 
one was willing to die for nothing. They were both willing to die for nothing. 
The Freniere household was in an uproar. You must understand, Lestat knew this 
perfectly. Both of us had hunted the Freniere plantation, Lestat for slaves and 
chicken thieves and me for animals."
"You were killing only animals?"
"Yes. But I'll come to that later, as I said. We both knew the plantation, and I 
had indulged in one of the greatest pleasures of a vampire, that of watching 
people unbeknownst to them. I knew the Freniere sisters as I knew the 
magnificent rose trees around my brother's oratory. They were a unique group of 
women. Each in her own way was as smart as the brother; and one of them, I shall 
call her Babette, was not only as smart as her brother, but far wiser. Yet none 
had been educated to care for the plantation; none understood even the simplest 
facts about its financial state. All were totally dependent upon young Freniere, 
and all knew it. And so, larded with their love for him, their passionate belief 
that he hung the moon and that any conjugal love they might ever know would only 
be a pale reflection of their love for him, larded with this was a desperation 
as strong as the will to survive. If Freniere died in the duel, the plantation 
would collapse. Its fragile economy, a life of splendor based on the perennial 
mortgaging of the next year's crop, was in his hands alone. So you can imagine 
the panic and misery in the Freniere household the night that the son went to 
town to fight the appointed duel. And now picture Lestat, gnashing his teeth 
like a comic-opera devil because he was not going to kill the young Freniere."
"You mean then . . . that you felt for the Freniere women?"
"I felt for them totally," said the vampire. "Their position was agonizing. And 
I felt for the boy. That night he locked himself in his father's study and made 
a will. He knew full well that if he fell under the rapier at four A.M. the next 
morning, his family would fall with him. He deplored his situation and yet could 
do nothing to help it. To run out on the duel would not only mean social ruin 
for him, but would probably have been impossible. The other young man would have 
pursued him until he was forced to fight. When he left the plantation at 
midnight, he was staring into the face of death itself with the character of a 
man who, having only one path to follow, has resolved to follow it with perfect 
courage. He would either kill the Spanish boy or die; it was unpredictable, 
despite all his skill. His face reflected a depth of feeling and wisdom I'd 
never seen on the face of any of Lestat's struggling victims. I had my first 
battle with Lestat then and there. I'd prevented him from killing the boy for 
months, and now he meant to kill him before the Spanish boy could.
"We were on horseback, racing after the young Freniere towards New Orleans, 
Lestat bent on overtaking him, I bent on overtaking Lestat. Well, the duel, as I 
told you, was scheduled for four A.M. On the edge of the swamp just beyond the 
city's northern gate. And arriving there just shortly before four, we had 
precious little time to return to Pointe du Lac, which meant our-own lives were 
in danger: I was incensed at Lestat as never before, and he was determined to 
get the boy. `Give him his chance!' I was insisting, getting hold of Lestat 
before he could approach the boy. It was midwinter, bitter-cold and damp in the 
swamps, one volley of icy rain after another sweeping the clearing where the 
duel was to be fought. Of course, I did not fear these elements in the sense 
that you might; they did not numb me, nor threaten me with mortal shivering or 
illness. But vampires feel cold as acutely as humans, and the blood of the kill 
is often the rich, sensual alleviation of that cold. But what concerned me that 
morning was not the pain I felt, but the excellent cover of darkness these 
elements provided, which made Freniere extremely vulnerable to Lestat's attack. 
All he need do would be step away from his two friends towards the swamp and 
Lestat might take him. And so I physically grappled with Lestat. I held him."
"But towards all this you had detachment, distance?"
"Hmmm . . ." the vampire sighed. "Yes. I had it, and with it a supremely 
resolute anger. To glut himself upon the life of an entire family was to me 
Lestat's supreme act of utter contempt and disregard for all he should have seen 
with a vampire's depth. So I held him in the dark, where he spit at me and 
cursed at me; and young Freniere took his rapier from his friend and second and 
went out on the slick, wet grass to meet his opponent. There was a brief 
conversation, then the duel commenced. In moments, it was over. Freniere had 
mortally wounded the other boy with a swift thrust to the chest. And he knelt in 
the grass, bleeding, dying, shouting something unintelligible at Freniere. The 
victor simply stood there. Everyone could see there was no sweetness in the 
victory. Freniere looked on death as if it were an abomination. His companions 
advanced with their lanterns, urging him to come away as soon as possible and 
leave the dying man to his friends. Meantime, the wounded one would allow no one 
to touch him. And then, as Freniere's group turned to go, the three of them 
walking heavily towards their horses, the man on the ground drew a pistol. 
Perhaps I alone could see this in the powerful dark. But, in any event, I 
shouted to Freniere as I ran towards the gun. And this was all that Lestat 
needed. While I was lost in my clumsiness, distracting Freniere and going for 
the gun itself, Lestat, with his years of experience and superior speed, grabbed 
the young man and spirited him into the cypresses. I doubt his friends even knew 
what had happened. The pistol had gone off, the wounded man had collapsed, and I 
was tearing through the nearfrozen marshes shouting for Lestat.
"Then I saw him. Freniere lay sprawled over the knobbed roots of a cypress, his 
boots deep in the murky water, and Lestat was still bent over him, one hand on 
the hand of Freniere that still held the foil. I went to pull Lestat off, and 
that right hand swung at me with such lightning speed I did not see it, did not 
know it had struck me until I found myself in the water also; and, of course, by 
the time I recovered, Freniere was dead. I saw him as he lay there, his eyes 
closed, his lips utterly still as if he were just sleeping. `Damn you!' I began 
cursing Lestat. And then I started, for the body of Freniere had begun to slip 
down into the marsh. The water rose over his face and covered him completely. 
Lestat was jubilant; he reminded me tersely that we had less than an hour to get 
back to Pointe du Lac, and he swore revenge on me. `If I didn't like the life of 
a Southern planter, rd finish you tonight. I know a way,' he threatened me. `I 
ought to drive your horse into the swamps. You'd have to dig yourself a hole and 
smother!' He rode off.
"Even over all these years, I feel that anger for him like a white-hot liquid 
filling my veins. I saw then what being a vampire meant to him."
"He was just a killer," the boy said, his voice reflecting some of the vampire's 
emotion. "No regard for anything."
"No. Being a vampire for him meant revenge. Revenge against life itself. Every 
time he took a life it was revenge. It was no wonder, then, that he appreciated 
nothing. The nuances of vampire existence weren't even available to him because 
he was focused with a maniacal vengeance upon the mortal life he'd left. 
Consumed with hatred, he looked back. Consumed with envy, nothing pleased him 
unless he could take it from others; and once having it, he grew cold and 
dissatisfied, not loving the thing for itself; and so he went after something 
else. Vengeance, blind and sterile and contemptible.
"But I've spoken to you about the Freniere sisters. It was almost half past five 
when I reached their plantation. Dawn would come shortly after six, but I was 
almost home. I slipped onto the upper gallery of their house and saw them all 
gathered in the parlor; they had never even dressed for bed. The candles burnt 
low, and they sat already as mourners, waiting for the word. They were all 
dressed in black, as was their at-home custom, and in the dark the, black shapes 
of their dresses massed together with their raven hair, so that in the glow of 
the candles their faces appeared as five soft, shimmering apparitions, each 
uniquely sad, each uniquely courageous. Babette's face alone appeared resolute. 
It was as if she had already made up her mind to take the burdens of Freniere if 
her brother died, and she had that same expression on her face now which had 
been on her brother's when he mounted to leave for the duel. What lay ahead of 
her was nearly impossible. What lay ahead was the final death of which Lestat 
was guilty. So I did something then which caused me great risk. I made myself 
known to her. I did this by playing the light. As you can see, my face is very 
white and has a smooth, highly reflective surface, rather like that of polished 
marble."
"Yes," the boy nodded, and appeared flustered. "It's very . . . beautiful, 
actually," said the boy. "I wonder if . . . but what happened?"
"You wonder if I was a handsome man when I was alive," said the vampire. The boy 
nodded. "I was. Nothing structurally is changed in me. Only I never knew that I 
was handsome. Life whirled about me a wind of petty concerns, as I've said. I 
gazed at nothing, not even a mirror . . . especially not a mirror . . . with a 
free eye. But this is what happened. I stepped near to the pane of glass and let 
the light touch my face. And this I did at a moment when Babette's eyes were 
turned towards the panes. Then I appropriately vanished.
"Within seconds all the sisters knew a `strange creature' had been seen, a 
ghostlike creature, and the two slave maids steadfastly refused to investigate. 
I waited out these moments impatiently for just that which I wanted to happen: 
Babette finally took a candelabrum from a side table, lit the candles and, 
scorning everyone's fear, ventured out onto the cold gallery alone to see what 
was there, her sisters hovering in the door like great, black birds, one of them 
crying that the brother was dead and she had indeed seen his ghost. Of course, . 
you must understand that Babette, being as strong as she was, never once 
attributed what she saw to imagination or to ghosts. I let her come the length 
of the dark gallery before I spoke to her, and even then I let her see only the 
vague outline of my body beside one of the columns. 'Tell your sisters to go 
back,' I whispered to her. `I come to tell you of your brother. Do as I say.' 
She was still for an instant, and then she turned to me and strained to see me 
in the dark. `I have only a little time. I would not harm you for the -world,' I 
said. And she obeyed. Saying it was nothing, she told them to shut the door, and 
they obeyed as people obey who not only need a leader but are desperate for one. 
Then I stepped into the light of Babette's candles."
The boy's eyes were wide. He put his hand to his lips. "Did you look to her . . 
. as you do to me?" he asked.
"You ask that with such innocence," said the vampire. "Yes, I suppose I 
certainly did. Only, by candlelight I always had a less supernatural appearance. 
And I made no pretense with her of being an ordinary creature. `I have only 
minutes,' I told her at once. `But what I have to tell you is of the greatest 
importance. Your brother fought bravely and won the duel=but wait. . You must 
know now, he is dead. Death was proverbial with him, the thief in the night 
about which all his goodness or courage could do nothing. But this is not the 
principal thing which I came to tell you. It is this. You can rule the 
plantation and you can save it. All that is required is that you let no one 
convince you otherwise. You must assume his position despite any outcry, any 
talk of convention, any talk of propriety or common sense. You must listen to 
nothing. The same land is here now that was here yesterday, morning when your 
brother slept above. Nothing is changed. You must take his place.
If you do not, the land is lost and the family is lost. You will be five women 
on a small pension doomed to live but half or less of what life could give you. 
Learn what you must know. Stop at nothing until you have the answers. And take 
my visitation to you to be your courage whenever you waver. You must take the 
reins of your own life. Your brother is dead.'
"I could see by her face that she had heard every word. She would have 
questioned me had there been time, but she believed me when I said there was 
not. Then I used all my skill to leave her so swiftly I appeared to vanish. From 
the garden I saw her face above in the glow of her candles. I saw her search the 
dark for me, turning around and around. And then I saw her make the Sign of the 
Crass and walk back to her sisters within."
The vampire smiled. "There was absolutely no talk on the river coast of any 
strange apparition to Babette Freniere, but after the first mourning and sad 
talk of the women left all alone, she became the scandal of the neighborhood 
because she chose to run the plantation on her own. She managed an immense dowry 
for her younger sister, and was married herself in another year. And Lestat and 
I almost never exchanged words."
"Did he go on living at Pointe du Lac?"
"Yes. I could not be certain he'd told me all I needed to know. And great 
pretense was necessary. My sister was married in my absence, for example, while 
I had a `malarial chill,' and something similar overcame me the morning of my 
mother's funeral. Meantime, Lestat and I sat down to dinner each night with the 
old man and made nice noises with our knives and forks, while he told us to eat 
everything on our plates and not to drink our wine too fast. With dozens of 
miserable headaches I would receive my sister in a darkened bedroom, the covers 
up to my chin, bid her and her husband bear with the dim light on account of the 
pain in my eyes, as I entrusted to them large amounts of money to invest for us 
all. Fortunately her husband was an idiot; a harmless one, but an idiot, the 
product of four generations of marriages between first cousins.
"But though these things went well, we began to have our problems with the 
slaves. They were the suspicious ones; and, as I've indicated, Lestat killed 
anyone and everyone he chose. So there was always some talk of mysterious death 
on the part of the coast. But it was what they saw of us which began the talk, 
and I heard it one evening when I was playing a shadow about the slave cabins.
"Now, let me explain first the character of these slaves. It was only about 
seventeen ninety-five, Lestat and I having lived there for four years in 
relative quiet, I investing the money which he acquired, increasing our lands, 
purchasing apartments and town houses in New Orleans which I rented, the work of 
the plantation itself producing little . . . more a cover for us than an 
investment. I say `our.' This is wrong. I never signed anything over to Lestat, 
and, as you realize, I was still legally alive. But in seventeen ninety-five 
these slaves did not have the character which you've seen in films and novels of 
the South. They were not soft-spoken, brown-skinned people in drab rags who 
spoke an English dialect. They were Africans. And they were islanders; that is, 
some of them had come from Santo Domingo. They were very black and totally 
foreign; they spoke in their African tongues, and they spoke the French patois; 
and when they sang, they sang African songs which made the fields exotic and 
strange, always frightening to me in my mortal life. They were superstitious and 
had their own secrets and traditions. In short, they had not yet been destroyed 
as Africans completely. Slavery was the curse of their existence; but they had 
not been robbed yet of that which had been characteristically theirs. They 
tolerated the baptism and modest garments imposed on there by the French 
Catholic laws; but in the evenings, they made their cheap fabrics into alluring 
costumes, made jewelry of animal bones and bits of discarded metal which they 
polished to look like gold; and the slave cabins of Pointe du Lac were a foreign 
country, an African coast after dark, in which not even the coldest overseer 
would want to wander. No fear for the vampire.
"Not until one summer evening when, passing for a shadow, I heard through the 
open doors of the black foreman's cottage a conversation which convinced me that 
Lestat and I slept is real danger. The slaves knew now we were not ordinary 
mortals. In hushed tones, the maids told of how, through a crack in the door, 
they had seen us dine on empty plates with empty silver, lifting empty glasses 
to our lips, laughing, our faces bleached and ghostly in the candlelight, the 
blind man a helpless fool in our power. Through keyholes they had seen Lestat's 
coffin, and once he had beaten one of them mercilessly for dawdling by the 
gallery windows of his room. `There is no bed in there,' they confided one to 
the other with nodding heads. `He sleeps in the coffin, I know it.' They were 
convinced, on the best of grounds, of what we were. And as for me, they'd seen 
me evening after evening emerge from the oratory, which was now little more than 
a shapeless mass of brick and vine, layered with flowering wisteria in the 
spring, wild roses in summer, moss gleaming on the old unpainted shutters which 
had never been opened, spiders spinning in the stone arches. Of course, I'd 
pretended to visit it in memory of Paul, but it was clear by their speech they 
no longer believed such lies. And now they attributed to us not only the deaths 
of slaves found in the fields and swamps and also the dead cattle and occasional 
horses, but all other strange events; even floods and thunder were the weapons 
of God in a personal battle waged with Louis and Lestat. But worse still, they 
were not planning to run away. Vice were devils. Our power inescapable. No, we 
must be destroyed. And at this gathering, where I became an unseen member, were 
a number of the Freniere slaves.
"This meant word would get to the entire coast. And though I firmly believed the 
entire coast to be impervious to a wave of hysteria, I did not intend to risk 
notice of any kind. I hurried back to the plantation house to tell Lestat our 
game of playing planter was over. He'd have to give up his slave whip and golden 
napkin ring and move into town.
"He resisted, naturally. His father was gravely ill and might not live. Ire had 
no intention of running away from stupid slaves. `I'll kill them all,' he said 
calmly, `in threes and fours. Some will run away and that will be fine.'
" `You're talking madness. The fact is I want you gone from here.'
" `You want me gone! You,' he sneered. He was building a card palace on the 
dining room table with a pack of very fine French cards. `You whining coward of 
a vampire who prowls the night killing alley cats and rats and staring for hours 
at candles as if they were people and standing in the rain like a zombie until 
your clothes are drenched and you smell like old wardrobe trunks in attics and 
have the look of a baffled idiot at the zoo.'
" `You've nothing more to tell me, and your insistence on recklessness has 
endangered us both. I might live in that oratory alone while this house fell to 
ruin. I don't care about it!' I told him. Because this was quite true. `But you 
must have all the things you never had of life and make of immortality a junk 
shop in which both of us become grotesque. Now, go look at your father and tell 
me how long he has to live, for that's how long you stay, and only if the slaves 
don't rise up against us!'
"He told me then to go look at his father myself, since I was the one who was 
always `looking,' and I did. The old man was truly dying. I had been spared my 
mother's death, more or less, because she had died very suddenly on an 
afternoon. She'd been found with her sewing basket, seated quietly in the 
courtyard; she had died as one goes to sleep. But now I was seeing a natural 
death that was too slow with agony and with consciousness. And I'd always liked 
the old man; he was kindly and simple and made few demands. By day, he sat in 
the sun of the gallery dozing and listening to the birds; by night, any chatter 
on our part kept him company. He could play chess, carefully feeling each piece 
and remembering the entire state of the board with remarkable accuracy; and 
though Lestat would never play with him, I did often. Now he lay gasping for 
breath, his forehead hot and wet, the pillow around him stained with sweat. And 
as he moaned and prayed for death, Lestat in the other room began to play the 
spinet. I slammed it shut, barely missing his fingers. `You won't play while he 
dies!' I said. `The hell I won't!' he answered me. `I'll play the drum if I 
like!' And taking a great sterling silver platter from a sideboard he slipped a 
finger through one of its handles and beat it with a spoon.
"I told him to stop it, or I would make him stop it. And then we both ceased our 
noise because the old man was calling his name. He was saying that he must talk 
to Lestat now before he died. I told Lestat to go to him. The sound of his 
crying was terrible. `Why should I? I've cared for him all these years. Isn't 
that enough?' And he drew from his pocket a nail file, and, seating himself on 
the foot of the old man's bed, he began to file his long nails.
"Meantime, I should tell you that I was aware of slaves about the house. They 
were watching and listening. I was truly hoping the old man would die within 
minutes. Once or twice before I'd dealt with suspicion or doubt on the part of 
several slaves, but never such a number. I immediately rang for Daniel, the 
slave to whom I'd given the overseer's house and position. But while I waited 
for him, I could hear the old man talking to Lestat; Lestat, who sat with his 
legs crossed, filing and filing, one eyebrow arched, his attention on his 
perfect nails. `It was the school,' the old man was saying. `Oh, I know you 
remember . . . what can I say to you . . .' he moaned.
" `You'd better say it,' Lestat said, `because you're about to die.' The old man 
let out a terrible noise, and I suspect I made some sound of my own. I 
positively loathed Lestat. I had a mind now to get him out of the room. `Well, 
you know that, don't you? Even a fool like you knows that,' said Lestat.
`You'll never forgive me, will you? Not now, not even after I'm dead,' said the 
old man.
" I don't know what you're talking about!" said Lestat.
"My patience was becoming exhausted with him, and the old man was becoming more 
and more agitated. He was begging Lestat to listen to him with a warm heart. The 
whole thing was making me shudder. Meantime, Daniel had come, and I knew the 
moment I saw him that everything at Pointe du Lac was lost. Had I been more 
attentive I'd have seen signs of it before now. He looked at me with eyes of 
glass. I was a monster to him. 'Monsieur Lestat's father is very ill. Going,' I 
said, ignoring his expression. `I want no noise tonight; the slaves must all 
stay within the cabins. A doctor is on his way.' He stared at me as if I were 
lying. And then his eyes moved curiously and coldly away from me towards the old 
man's door. His face underwent such a change that I rose at once and looked in 
the room. It was Lestat, slouched at the foot of the bed, his back to the 
bedpost, his nail file working furiously, grimacing in such a way that both his 
great teeth showed prominently."
The vampire stopped, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. He was looking 
at the boy. And the boy looked shyly at the table. But he had already looked, 
and fixedly, at the vampire's mouth. He had seen that the lips were of a 
different texture from the vampire's skin, that they were silken and delicately 
lined like any person's lips, only deadly white; and he had glimpsed the white 
teeth. Only, the vampire had such a way of smiling that they were not completely 
revealed; and the boy had not even thought of such teeth until now. "You can 
imagine," said the vampire, "what this meant.
"I had to kill him."
"You what?" said the boy.
"I had to kill him. He started to run. He would have alarmed everyone. Perhaps 
it might have been handled some other way, but I had no time. So I went after 
him, overpowering him. But then, finding myself in the act of doing what I had 
not done for four years, I stopped. This was a man. He had his bone-handle knife 
in his hand to defend himself. And I took it from him easily and slipped it into 
his heart. He sank to his knees at once, his fingers tightening on the blade, 
bleeding on it. And the sight of the blood, the aroma of it, maddened me. I 
believe I moaned aloud. But I did not reach for him, I would not. Then I 
remember seeing Lestat's figure emerge in the mirror over the sideboard. `Why 
did you do this!' he demanded. I turned to face him, determined he would not see 
me in this weakened state. The old man was delirious, he went on, he could not 
understand what the old man was saying. `The slaves, they know . . . you must go 
to the cabins and keep watch,' I managed to say to him. `I'll care for the old 
man.'
" `Kill him,' Lestat said.
" `Are you mad!' I answered. `He's your father!'
" `I know he's my father!' said Lestat. `That's why you have to kill him. I 
can't kill him! If I could, I would have done it a long time ago, damn him!' He 
wrung his hands. `We've got to get out of here. And look what you've done 
killing this one. There's no time to lose. His wife will be wailing up here in 
minutes . . . or she'll send someone worse!"'
The vampire sighed. "This was all true. Lestat was right. I could hear the 
slaves gathering around Daniel's cottage, waiting for him. Daniel had been brave 
enough to come into the haunted house alone. When he didn't return, the slaves 
would panic, become a mob. I told Lestat to calm them, to use all his power as a 
white master over them and not to alarm them with horror, and then I went into 
the bedroom and shut the door. I had then another shock in a night of shocks. 
Because I'd never seen Lestat's father as he was then.
"He was sitting up now, leaning forward, talking to Lestat, begging Lestat to 
answer ham, telling him he understood his bitterness better than Lestat did 
himself. And he Was a living corpse. Nothing animated his sunken body but a 
fierce will: hence, his eyes for their gleam were all the more sunken in his 
skull, and his lips in their trembling made his old yellowed mouth more 
horrible. I sat at the foot of the bed, and, suffering to see him so, I gave him 
my hand. I cannot tell you how much his appearance had shaken me. For when I 
bring death, it is swift and consciousless, leaving the victim as if in 
enchanted sleep. But this was the slow decay, the body refusing to surrender to 
the vampire of time which had sucked upon it for years on end. `Lestat,' he 
said. `Just for once, don't be hard with me. Just for once, be for me the boy 
you were. My son.' He said this over and over, the words, 'My son, my son'; and 
then he said something I could not hear about innocence and innocence destroyed. 
But I could see that he was not out of his mind, as Lestat thought, but in some 
terrible state of lucidity. The burden of the past Was on him with full force; 
and the present, which was only death, which he fought with all his will, could 
do nothing to soften that burden. But I knew I might deceive him if I used all 
my skill, and, bending close to him now, I whispered the word, `Father.' It was 
not Lestat's voice, it was mine, a soft whisper. But he calmed at once and T 
thought then he might die. But he held my hand as if he were being pulled under 
by dark ocean waves and I alone could save him. He talked now of some country 
teacher, a name garbled, who. found in Lestat a brilliant pupil and begged to 
take him to a monastery for an education. He cursed himself for bringing Lestat 
home, for burning his books. `You must forgive me, Lestat,' he cried.
"I pressed his hand tightly, hoping this might do for some answer, but he 
repeated this again. `You have it all to live for, but you are as cold and 
brutal as I was then with the work always there and the cold and hunger! Lestat, 
you must remember. You were the gentlest of them all! God will forgive me if you 
forgive me.'
"Well, at that moment, the real Esau came through the door. I gestured for 
quiet, but he wouldn't see that. So I had to get up quickly so the father 
wouldn't hear his voice from a distance. The slaves had run from him. `But 
they're out there, they're gathered in the dark. I hear them,' said Lestat. And 
then he glared at the old man. `Kill him, Louis!' he said to me, his voice 
touched with the first pleading I'd ever heard in it. Then he bit down in rage. 
`Do it!'
" `Lean over that pillow and tell him you forgive him all, forgive him for 
taking you out of school when you were a boy! Tell him that now.'
" `For what!' Lestat grimaced, so that his face looked like a skull. `Taking me 
out of school!' He threw up his hands and let out a terrible roar of 
desperation. `Damn him! Kill him!' he said.
" `Nor' I said. `You forgive him. Or you kill him yourself. Go on. Kill your own 
father.'
"The old man begged to be told what we were saying. He called out, `Son, son,' 
and Lestat danced like the maddened Rumpelstiltskin. about to put his foot 
through the moor. I went to the lace curtains. I could see and hear the slaves 
surrounding the house of Pointe du Lao, forms woven in the shadows, drawing 
near. `You were Joseph among your brothers,' the old man said. `The best of 
them, but how was I to know? It was when you were gone I knew, when all those 
years passed and they could offer me no comfort, no solace. And then you came 
back to me and took me from the farm, but it wasn't you. It wasn't the same 
boy.'
"I turned on Lestat now and veritably dragged him towards the bed. Never had I 
seen him so weak, and at the same time enraged. He shook me off and then knelt 
down near the pillow, glowering at me. I stood resolute, and whispered, 
`Forgive!'
"It's all right, Father. You must rest easy. I hold nothing against you," he 
said, his voice thin and strained over his anger.
"The old man turned on the pillow, murmuring something soft with relief, but 
Lestat was already gone. He stopped short in the doorway, his hands over his 
ears. `They're coming!' he whispered; and then, turning just so he could see me, 
he said, `Take him. For God's sake'
"The old man never even knew what happened. He never awoke from his stupor. I 
bled him just enough, opening the gash so he would then die without feeding my 
dark passion. That thought I couldn't bear. I knew now it wouldn't matter if the 
body was found in this manner, because I had had enough of Pointe du Lac and 
Lestat and all this identity of Pointe du Lac's prosperous master. I would torch 
the house, and turn to the wealth I'd held under many names, safe for just such 
a moment.
"Meantime, Lestat was after the slaves. He would leave such-ruin and death 
behind him no one could make a story of that night at Pointe du Lac, and I went 
with him. As before, his ferocity was mysterious, but now I bared my fangs on 
the humans who fled from me, my steady advance overcoming their clumsy, pathetic 
speed as the veil of death descended, or the veil of madness. The power and the 
proof of the vampire was incontestable, so that the slaves scattered in all 
directions. And it was I who ran back up the steps to put the torch to Pointe du 
Lac.
"Lestat came bounding after me. `What are you doing!' he shouted. `Are you mad!' 
But there was no way to putout the flames. `They're gone and you're destroying 
it, all of it.' He turned round and round in the magnificent parlor, amid his 
fragile splendor. `Get your coffin out. You have three hours till dawn!' I said. 
The house was a funeral pyre."
"Could the fire have hurt you?" asked the boy.
"Most definitely!" said the vampire.
"Did you go back to the oratory? Was it safe?"
"No. Not at all. Some fifty-five slaves were scattered around the grounds. Many 
of them would not have desired the life of a runaway and would most certainly go 
right to Freniere or south to the Bel Jardin plantation down river. I had no 
intention of staying there that night. But there was little time to go anywhere 
else."
"The woman, Babette!" said the boy.
The vampire smiled. "Yes, I went to Babette. She lived now at Freniere with her 
young husband. I had enough time to load my coffin into the carriage and go to 
her."
"But what about Lestat?"
The vampire sighed. "Lestat went with me. It was his intention to go on to New 
Orleans, and he was trying to persuade me to do just that. But when he saw l 
meant to hide at Freniere, he opted for that also. We might not have ever made 
it to New Orleans. It was growing light. Not so that mortal eyes would have seen 
it, but Lestat and I could see it.
"Now, as for Babette, I had visited her once again. As I told you, she had 
scandalized the coast by remaining alone on the plantation without a man in the 
house, without even an older woman. Babette's greatest problem was that she 
might succeed financially only to suffer the isolation of social ostracism. She 
had such a sensibility that wealth itself mean nothing to her; family, a line . 
. . this meant something to Babette. Though she was able to hold the plantation 
together, the scandal was wearing on her. She was giving up inside. I came to 
her one night in the garden. Not permitting her to look on me, I told her in a 
most gentle voice that I was the same person she'd seen before. That I knew of 
her life and her suffering. `Don't expect people to understand it,' I told her. 
`They are fools. They want you to retire because of your brother's death. They 
would use your life as if it were merely oil for a proper lamp. You must defy 
them, but you must defy them with purity and confidence.' She was listening all 
the while in silence. I told her she was to give a ball for a cause. And the 
cause to be religious. She might pick a convent in New Orleans, any one, and 
plan for a philanthropic ball. She would invite her deceased mother's dearest 
friends to be chaperones and she would do all of this with perfect confidence. 
Above all, perfect confidence. It was confidence and purity which were 
all-important.
"Well, Babette thought this to be a stroke of genius. `I don't know what you 
are, and you will not tell me,' she said. (This was true, I would not.) `But I 
can only think that you are an angel.' And she begged to see my face. That is, 
she begged in the manner of such people as Babette, who are not given to truly 
begging anyone for anything. Not that Babette was proud. She was simply strong 
and honest, which in most cases makes begging . . . I see you want to ask me a 
question." The vampire stopped.
"Oh, no," said the boy, who had meant to hide it.
"But you mustn't be afraid to ask me anything. If I held something too close . . 
. " And when the vampire said this his face darkened for an instant. He frowned, 
and as his brows drew together a small well appeared in the flesh of his 
forehead over his left brow, as though someone had pressed it with a finger. It 
gave him a peculiar look of deep distress. "If I held something too close for 
you to ask about it, I would not bring it up in the first place," he said.
The boy found himself staring at the vampire's eyes, at the eyelashes which were 
fine black wires in the tender flesh of the lids.
"Ask me," he said to the boy.
"Babette, the way you speak of her," said the boy. "As if your feeling was 
special."
"Did I give you the impression I could not feel?" asked the vampire.
"No, not at all. Obviously you felt for the old man. You stayed to comfort him 
when you were in danger. And what you felt for young Freniere when Lestat wanted 
to kill him . . . all this you explained. But I was wondering . . . did you have 
a special feeling for Babette? Was it feeling for Babette all along that caused 
you to protect Freniere?"
"You mean love," said the vampire. "Why do you hesitate to say it?"
"Because you spoke of detachment," said the boy.
 " Do you think that angels are detached?" asked the vampire.
The boy thought for a moment. "Yes," he said.
"But aren't angels capable of love?" asked the vampire. "Don't angels gaze upon 
the face of God with complete love?"
The boy thought for a moment. "Love or adoration," he said.
"What is the difference?" asked the vampire thoughtfully. "What is the 
difference?" It was clearly not a riddle for the boy. He was asking himself. 
"Angels feel love, and pride . . . the pride of The Fall . . . and hatred. The 
strong overpowering emotions of detached persons in whom emotion and will are 
one," he said finally. He stared at the table now, as though he were thinking 
this over, was not entirely satisfied with it. "I had for Babette . . . a strong 
feeling. It is not the strongest I've ever known for a human being." He looked 
up at the boy. "But it was very strong. Babette was to me in her own way an 
ideal human being. "
He shifted in his chair, the cape moving softly about him, and turned his face 
to the windows. The boy bent forward and checked the tape. Then he took another 
cassette from his brief case and, begging the vampire's pardon, fitted it into 
place, "I'm afraid I did ask something too personal. I didn't mean . . . " he 
said anxiously to the vampire.
"You asked nothing of the sort," said the vampire, looking at him suddenly. "It 
is a question right to the point. I feel love, and I felt some measure of love 
for Babette, though not the greatest love I've ever felt. It was foreshadowed in 
Babette.
"To return to my story, Babette's charity ball was a success and her re-entry in 
social life assured by it. Her money generously underwrote any doubts in the 
minds of her suitors' families, and she married. On summer nights, I used to 
visit her, never letting her see me or know that I was there. I came to see that 
she was happy, and seeing her happy I felt a happiness as the result.
"And to Babette I came now with Lestat. He would have killed the Frenieres long 
ago if I hadn't stopped him, and he thought now that was what I meant to do. 
`And what peace would that bring?' I asked. `You call me the idiot, and you've 
been the idiot all along. Do you think I don't know why you made me a vampire? 
You couldn't live by yourself, you couldn't manage even the simplest things. For 
years now, I've managed everything while you sat about making a pretense of 
superiority. There's nothing left for you to tell me about life. I have no need 
of you and no use for you. It's you who need me, and if you touch but one of the 
Freniere slaves, I'll get rid of you. It will be a battle between us, and I 
needn't point out to you I have more wit to fare better in my little finger than 
you in your entire frame. Do as I say.'
"Well, this startled him, though it shouldn't have; and he protested he had much 
to tell me, of things and types of people I might kill who would cause sudden 
death and places in the world I must never go and so forth and so on, nonsense 
that I could hardly endure. But I had no time for him. The overseer's lights 
were lit at Freniere; he was trying to quell the excitement of the runaway 
slaves and his own. And the fire of Pointe du Lac could be seen still against 
the sky. Babette was dressed and attending to business, having sent carriages to 
Pointe du Lac and slaves to help fight the blaze. The frightened runaways were 
kept away from the others, and at that point no one regarded their stories as 
any more than slave foolishness. Babette knew something dreadful had happened 
and suspected murder, never the supernatural. She was in the study making a note 
of the fire in the plantation diary when I found her. It was almost morning. I 
had only a few minutes to convince her she must help. I spoke to her at first, 
refusing to let her turn around, and calmly she listened. I told her I must have 
a room for the night, to rest. 'I've never brought you harm. I ask you now for a 
key, and your promise that no one will try to enter that room until tonight. 
Then I'll tell you all' I was nearly desperate now. The sky was paling. Lestat 
was yards off in the orchard with the coffins. `But why have you come to me 
tonight?' she asked. `And why not to you?' I replied. `Did I not help you at the 
very moment when you most needed guidance, when you alone stood strong among 
those who are dependent and weak? Did I not twice offer you good counsel? And 
haven't I watched over your happiness ever since?' I could see the figure of 
Lestat at the window. He was in a panic. 'Give me the key to a room. Let no one 
come near it till nightfall. I swear to you I would never bring you harm.' `And 
if I don't . . . if I believe you come from the devil!' she -said now, and meant 
to turn her head. I reached for the candle and put it out. She saw me standing 
with my back to the graying windows. `If you don't, and if you believe me to be 
the devil, I shall
die.' I said. `Give me the key. I could kill you now if I chose, do you see?' 
And now I moved close to her and showed myself to her more completely, so that 
she gasped and drew back, holding to the arm of her chair. `But I would not. I 
would die rather than kill you. I will die if you don't give me such a key as I 
ask.'
"It was accomplished. What she thought, I don't know. But she gave me one of the 
ground-floor storage rooms where wine was aged, and I am sure she saw Lestat and 
me bringing the coffins. I not only locked the door but barricaded it.
"Lestat was up the next evening when I awoke."
"Then she kept her word."
"Yes. Only she had gone a step further. She had not only respected our locked 
door; she had locked it again from without."
"And the stories of the slaves . . . she'd heard them."
"Yes, she had. Lestat was the first to discover we were locked in, however. He 
became furious. He had planned to get to New Orleans as fast as possible. He was 
now completely suspicious of me. `I only needed you as long as my father lived,' 
he said, desperately trying to find some opening somewhere. The place was a 
dungeon.
" `Now I won't put up with anything from you, I warn you.' He didn't even wish 
to turn his back on me. I sat there straining to hear voices in the rooms above, 
wishing that he would shut up, not wishing to confide for a moment my feeling 
for Babette or my hopes.
"I was also thinking something else. You ask me about feeling and detachment. 
One of its aspects, detachment with feeling, I should say, is that you can think 
of two things at the same time. You can think that you are not safe and may die, 
and you can think of something very abstract and remote. And this was definitely 
so with me. I was thinking at that moment, wordlessly and rather deeply, how 
sublime friendship between Lestat and me might have been; how few impediments to 
it there would have been, and how much to be shared. Perhaps it was the 
closeness of Babette which caused me to feel it, for how could I truly ever come 
to know Babette, except, of course, through the one final way; to take her life, 
to become one with her in an embrace of death when my soul would become one with 
my heart and nourished with it. But my soul wanted to- know Babette without my 
need to kill, without robbing her of every breath of life, every drop of blood. 
But Lestat, how we might have known each other, had he been a man of character, 
a man of even a little thought. The old man's words came back to me; Lestat a 
brilliant pupil, a lover of books that had been burned. I knew only the Lestat 
who sneered at my library, called it a pile of dust, ridiculed relentlessly my 
reading, my meditations.
"I became aware now that the house over our heads was quieting. Now and then 
feet moved and the boards creaked and the light in the cracks of the boards gave 
a faint, uneven illumination. I could see Lestat feeling along the brick walls, 
his hard enduring vampire face a twisted mask of human frustration. I was 
confident we must part ways at once, that I must if necessary put an ocean 
between us. And I realized that I'd tolerated him this long because of 
self-doubt. I'd fooled myself into believing I stayed for the old man, and for 
my sister and her husband. But I stayed with Lestat because I was afraid he did 
know essential secrets as a vampire which I could not discover alone and, more 
important, because he was the only one of my kind whom I knew. He had never told 
me how he had become a vampire or where I might find a single other member of 
our kind. This troubled me greatly then, as much as it had for four years. I 
hated  and wanted to leave him; yet could I leave him?
"Meantime, as all this passed through my thoughts, Lestat continued his 
diatribe: he didn't need me; he wasn't going to put up with anything, especially 
not any threat from the Frenieres. We had to be ready when that door opened. 
`Remember!' he said to the finally. `Speed and strength; they cannot match us in 
that. And fear. Remember always, to strike fear. Don't be sentimental now! 
You'll cost us everything.'
" `You wish to be on your own after this?' I asked him. I wanted him to say it. 
I did not have the courage. Or, rather, I did not know my own feelings.
" `I want to get to New Orleans!' he said. `I was simply warning you I don't 
need you. But to get out of here we need each other. You don't begin to know how 
to use your powers! You have no innate sense of what you are! Use your 
persuasive powers with this woman if she comes. But if she comes with others, 
then be prepared to act like what you are.'
" `Which is what?' I asked him, because it had never seemed such a mystery to me 
as it did at that time. `What am I?' He was openly disgusted. He threw up his 
hands.
" `Be prepared . . . he said, now baring his magnificent teeth, `to kill!' He 
looked suddenly at the boards overhead. `They're going to bed up there, do you 
hear them?' After a long silent time during which Lestat paced and I sat there 
musing, plumbing my mind for what I might do or say to Babette or, deeper still, 
for the answer to a harder question-what did I feel for Babette? After a long 
time, a light flared beneath the door. Lestat was poised to jump whoever should 
open it. It was Babette alone and she entered with a lamp, not seeing Lestat, 
who stood behind her, but looking directly at me.
"I had never seen her as she looked then; her hair was down for bed, a mass of 
dark waves behind her white dressing gown; and her face was tight with worry and 
fear. This gave it a feverish radiance and made her large brown eyes all the 
more huge. As I have told you, I loved her strength and honesty, the greatness 
of her soul. And I did not feel passion for her as you would feel it. But I 
found her more alluring than any woman I'd known in mortal life. Even in the 
severe dressing gown, her arms and breasts were round and soft; and she seemed 
to me an intriguing soul clothed in rich, mysterious flesh. I who am hard and 
spare and dedicated to a purpose, felt drawn to her irresistibly; and, knowing 
it could only culminate in death, I turned away from her at once, wondering if 
when she gazed into my eyes she found them dead and soulless.
"`You are the one who came to me before,' she said now, as if she hadn't been 
sure. `And you are the owner of Pointe du Lac. You argil' I knew as she spoke 
that she must have heard the wildest stories of last night, and there would be 
no convincing her of any lie. I had used my unnatural appearance twice to reach 
her, to speak to her; I could not hide it or minimize it now.
" `I mean you no harm.,' I said to her. `I need only a carriage and horses . . . 
the horses I left last night in the pasture.' She didn't seem to hear my words; 
she drew closer, determined to catch me in the circle of her light.
"And then I saw Lestat behind her, his shadow merging with her shadow on the 
brick wall; he was anxious and dangerous. `You will give me the carriage?' I 
insisted. She was looking at me now, the lamp raised; and just when I meant to 
look away, I saw her face change. It went still, blank, as if her soul were 
losing its consciousness. She closed her eyes and shook her head. It occurred to 
me that I had somehow caused her to go into a trance without any effort on my 
part. `What are you!' she whispered. `You're from the devil. You were from the 
devil when you came to met'
" 'The devil!' I answered her. This distressed me more than I thought I could be 
distressed. If she believed this, then she would think my counsel bad; she would 
question herself. Her life was rich and good, and I knew she mustn't do this. 
Like all strong people, she suffered always a measure of loneliness; she was a 
marginal outsider, a secret infidel of a certain sort. And the balance by which 
she lived might be upset if she were to question her own goodness. She stared at 
me with undisguised horror. It was as if in horror she forgot her own vulnerable 
position. And now Lestat, who was drawn to weakness like a parched man to water, 
grabbed her wrist, and she screamed and dropped the lamp. The flames leaped in 
the splattered oil, and Lestat pulled her backwards towards the open door. `You 
get the carriage!' he said to her. `Get it now, and the horses. You are in 
mortal danger; don't talk of devils!'
"I stomped on the flames and went for Lestat, shouting at him to leave her. He 
had her by both wrists, and she was furious. `You'll rouse the house if you 
don't shut up!' he said to me. `And I'll kill her! Get the carriage . . . lead 
us. Talk to the stable boy!' he said to her, pushing her into the open air..
"We moved slowly across the dark court, my distress almost unbearable, Lestat 
ahead of me; and before us both Babette, who moved backwards, her eyes peering 
at us in the dark. Suddenly she stopped One dim light burned in the house above. 
`I'll get you nothing!' she said. I reached for Lestat's arm and told him I must 
handle this. `She'll reveal us to everyone unless you let me talk to her,' I 
whispered to him.
" `Then get yourself in check,' he said disgustedly. `Be strong. Don't quibble 
with her.'
" `You go as I talk . . . go to the stables and get the carriage and the horses. 
But don't kill!' Whether he'd obey me or not I didn't know, but he darted away 
just as .I stepped up to Babette. Her face was a mixture of fury and resolution. 
She said, `Get thee behind me, Satan.' And I stood there before her then, 
speechless, just holding her in my glance as surely as she held me. If she could 
hear Lestat in the night she gave no indication. Her hatred for me burned me 
like fire.
" `Why do you say this to me?' I asked. `Was the counsel I gave you. bad? Did I 
do you harm? I came to help you, to give you strength. I thought only of you, 
when I had no need to think of you at all.'
"She shook her head. `But why, why do you talk to me like this?' she asked. `I 
know what you've done at Pointe du Lac; you've lived there like a devil! The 
slaves are wild with stories! All day men have been on the river road on the way 
to Pointe du Lac; my husband was there! He saw the house in ruins, the bodies of 
slaves throughout the orchards, the fields. What are you! Why do you speak to me 
gently! What do you want of me?' She clung now to the pillars of the porch and 
was backing slowly to the staircase. Something moved above in the lighted 
window.
" `I cannot give you such answers now,' I said to her. `Believe me when I tell 
you I came to you only to do you goad. And would not have brought worry and care 
to you last night for anything, had I the choice!' "
The vampire stopped.
The boy sat forward, his eyes wide. The vampire was frozen, staring off, lost in 
his thoughts, his memory. And the boy looked down suddenly, as if this were the 
respectful thing to do. He glanced again at the vampire and then away, his own 
face as distressed as the vampire's; and then he started to say something, but 
he stopped.
The vampire turned towards him and studied him, so that the boy flushed and 
looked away again anxiously. But then he raised his eyes and looked into the 
vampire's eyes. He swallowed, but he held the vampire's gaze.
"Is this what you want?" the vampire whispered. "Is this what you wanted to 
hear?"
He moved the chair back soundlessly and walked to the window. The boy sat as if 
stunned looking at his broad shoulders and the long mass of the cape. The 
vampire turned his head slightly. "You don't answer me. I'm not giving you what 
you want, am I? You wanted an interview. Something to broadcast on the radio."
"That doesn't matter. I'll throw the tapes away if you want!" The boy rose. "I 
can't say I understand all you're telling me. You'd know I was lying if I said I 
did. So how can I ask you to go on, except to say what I do understand . . . 
what I do understand is like nothing I've ever understood before." He took a 
step towards the vampire. The vampire appeared to be looking down into 
Divisadero Street. Then he turned his head slowly and looked at the boy and 
smiled. His face was serene and almost affectionate. And the boy suddenly felt 
uncomfortable. He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned towards the 
table. Then he looked at the vampire tentatively and said. "Will you . . . 
please go on?"
The vampire turned with folded arms and leaned against the window. "Why?" he 
asked.
The boy was at a loss. "Because I want to hear it."
He shrugged. "Because I want to know what happened."
"All right," said the vampire, with the same smile playing on his lips. And he 
went back to the chair and sat opposite the boy and turned the recorder just a 
little and said, "Marvelous contraption, really . . . so let me go on.
"You must understand that what I felt for Babette now was a desire for 
communication, stronger than any other desire I then felt . . . except for the 
physical desire for . . . blood. It was so strong in me, this desire, that it 
made me feel the depth of my capacity for loneliness. When I'd spoken to her 
before, there had been a brief but direct communication which was as simple and 
as satisfying as taking a person's hand. Clasping it. Letting it go gently. All 
this in a moment of great need and distress. But now we were at odds. To 
Babette, I was a monster; and I found it horrible to myself and would have done 
anything to overcome her feeling. I told her the counsel I'd given her was 
right, that no instrument of the devil could do right even if he chose.
" `I know!' she answered me. But by this she meant that she could no more trust 
me than the devil himself. I approached her and she moved back. I raised my hand 
and she shrank, clutching for the railing. `All right, then,' I said, feeling a 
terrible exasperation. `Why did you protect me last night! Why have you come to 
me alone!' What I saw in her face was cunning. She had a reason, but she would 
by no means reveal it to me. It was impossible for her to speak to me freely, 
openly, to give me the communication I desired. I felt weary looking at her. The 
night was already late, and I could see and hear that Lestat had stolen into the 
wine cellar and taken our caskets, and I had a need to get away; and other needs 
besides . . . the need to kill and drink. But it wasn't that which made me 
weary. It was something else, something far worse. It was as if this night were 
only one of thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into night to 
make a great arching line of which I couldn't see the end, a night in which I 
roamed alone under cold, mindless stars. I think I turned away from her and put 
my hand to my eyes. I felt oppressed and weak suddenly. I think I was making 
some sound without my will. And then on this vast and desolate landscape of 
night, where I was standing alone and where Babette was only an illusion, I saw 
suddenly a possibility that I'd never considered before, a possibility from 
which I'd fled, rapt as I was with the world, fallen into the senses of the 
vampire, in love with color and shape and sound and singing and softness and 
infinite variation. Babette was moving, but I took no note of it. She was taking 
something from her pocket; her great ring of household keys jingled there. She 
was moving up the steps. Let her go away, I was thinking. `Creature of the 
devil!' I whispered. `Get thee behind me, Satan,' I repeated. I turned to look 
at her now. She was frozen on the steps, with wide suspicious eyes. She'd 
reached the lantern which hung on the wall, and she held it in her hands just 
staring at me, holding it tight, like a valuable purse. `You think I come from 
the devil?' I asked her.
"She quickly moved her left fingers around the hook of the lantern and with her 
right hand made the sign of the Cross, the Latin words barely audible to me; and 
her face blanched and her eyebrows rose when there was absolutely no change 
because of it. `Did you expect me to go up in a puff of smoke?' I asked her. I 
drew closer now, for I had gained detachment from her by virtue of my thoughts. 
`And where would I go?' I asked her. `And where would I go, to hell, from whence 
I came? To the devil, from whom I came?' I stood at the foot of the steps. 
`Suppose I told you I know nothing of the devil. Suppose I told you that I do 
not even know if he exists!' It was the devil I'd seen upon the landscape of my 
thoughts; it was the devil about whom I thought now. I turned away from her. She 
wasn't hearing me as you are now. She wasn't listening. I looked up at the 
stars. Lestat was ready, I knew it. It was as if he'd been ready there with the 
carriage for years; and she had stood upon the step for years. I had the sudden 
sensation my brother was there and had been there for ages also, and that he was 
talking to me low in an excited voice, and what he was saying was desperately 
important but it was going away from me as fast as he said it, like the rustle 
of rats in .the rafters of an immense house. There was a scraping sound and a 
burst of light. `I don't know whether I come from the devil or not! I don't know 
what I am!' I shouted at Babette, my voice deafening in my own sensitive ears. 
`I am to live to the end of the world, and I do not even know what I am!' But 
the light flared before me; it was the lantern which she had lit with a match 
and held now so I couldn't see her face. For a moment I could see nothing but 
the light, and then the great weight of the lantern struck me full force in the 
chest and the glass shattered on the bricks anti the flames roared on my legs, 
in my face. Lestat was shouting from the darkness, `Put it out, put it out, 
idiot. It will consume you!' And I felt something thrashing me wildly in my 
blindness. It was Lestat's jacket. I'd fallen helpless back against the pillar, 
helpless as much from the fire and the blow as from the knowledge that Babette 
meant to destroy me, as from, the knowledge that I did not know what I was.
"All this happened in a matter of seconds. The fire was out and I knelt in the 
dark with my hands on the bricks. Lestat at the top of the stairs had Babette 
again, and I flew up after him, grabbing him about the neck and pulling him 
backwards. He turned on me, enraged, and kicked me; but I clung to him and 
pulled him down on top of me to the bottom. Babette was petrified. I saw her 
dark outline against the sky and the glint of light in her eyes. `Come on then!' 
Lestat said, scrambling to his feet. Babette was putting her hand to her throat. 
My injured eyes strained to gather the light to see her. Her throat bled. 
`Remember!' I said to her. I might have killed you! Or let him kill you! I did 
not. You called me devil. You are wrong.'"
"Then you'd stopped Lestat just in time," said the boy.
"Yes. Lestat could kill and dank like a bolt of lightning. But I had saved only 
Babette's physical life. I was not to know that until later."
"In an hour and a half Lestat and I were in New Orleans, the horses nearly dead 
from exhaustion, the carriage parked on a side street a block from a new Spanish 
hotel. Lestat had an old man by the arm and was putting fifty dollars into his 
hand. `Get us a suite,' he directed him, `and order some champagne. Say it is 
for two gentlemen, and pay in advance. And when you come back I'll have another 
fifty for you. And I'll be watching for you, I wager.' Isis gleaming eyes held 
the man in thrall. I knew he'd kill him as soon as he returned with the hotel 
room keys, and he did. I sat in the carriage watching wearily as the man grew 
weaker and weaker and finally died, his body collapsing like a sack of rocks in 
a doorway as Lestat let him go. `Good night, sweet prince,' said Lestat `and 
here's your fifty dollars.' And he shoved the money into his pocket as if it 
were a capital joke.
"Now we slipped in the courtyard doors of the hotel and went up to the lavish 
parlor of our suite. Champagne glistened in a frosted bucket. Two glasses stood 
on the silver tray. I knew Lestat would fill one glass and sit there staring at 
the pale yellow color. And I, a man in a trance, lay on the settee staring at 
him as if nothing he could do mattered. I have to leave him or die, I thought. 
It would be sweet to die, I thought. Yes, die. I wanted to die before. Now I 
wish to die. I saw it with such sweet clarity, such dead calm.
" `You're being morbid!' Lestat said suddenly. `It's almost dawn.' He pulled the 
lace curtains back, and I could see the rooftops under the dark blue sky, and 
above, the great constellation Orion. `Go kill!' said Lestat, sliding up the 
glass. He stepped out of the sill, and I heard his feet land softly on the 
rooftop beside the hotel. He was going for the coffins, or at least one. My 
thirst rose in me like fever, and I followed him. My desire to die was constant, 
like a pure thought in the mind, devoid of emotion. Yet I needed to feed. I've 
indicated to you I would not then kill people. I moved along the rooftop in 
search of rats."
"But why . . . you've said Lestat shouldn't have made you start with people. Did 
you mean . . . do you mean for you it was an aesthetic choice, not a moral one?"
"Had you asked me then, I would have told you it was aesthetic, that I wished to 
understand death in stages. That the death of an animal yielded such pleasure 
and experience to me that I had only begun to understand it, and wished to save 
the experience of human death for my mature understanding. But it was moral. 
Because all aesthetic decisions are moral, really."
"I don't understand," said the boy. "I thought aesthetic decisions could be 
completely immoral. What about the clich of the artist who leaves his wife and 
children so he can paint? Or Nero playing the harp while Rome burned?"
 "Both were moral decisions. Both served a higher good, in the mind of the 
artist. The conflict lies between the 
morals of the artist and the morals of society, not between aesthetics and 
morality: But often this isn't 
understood; and here comes the waste, the tragedy. An artist, stealing paints 
from a store, for example, imagines 
himself to have made an inevitable but immoral decision, and then he sees ' self 
as fallen from grace; what 
follows is despair and petty irresponsibility, as if morality were a great glass 
world which can be utterly shattered 
by one act. But this was not my great concern then. I did not know these things 
then. I believed I killed animals 
for aesthetic reasons only, and I hedged against the great moral question of 
whether or mot by my very nature I 
was damned.
"Because, you see, though Lestat had never said anything about devils or hell to 
me, I believed I was damned when I went over to him, just as Judas must have 
believed it when he put the noose around his neck. You understand?"
The boy said nothing. He started to speak but didn't.
The color burned for a moment in blotches on his cheeks. " Were you?" he 
whispered.
The vampire only sat there, smiling, a small smile that played on his lips like 
the light. The boy was staring at him now as if he were just seeing him for the 
first time.
"Perhaps . . . " said the vampire drawing himself up and crossing his legs ". . 
. we should take things one at a time. Perhaps I should go on with my story."
"Yes, please . . ." said the boy.
"I was agitated that night, as I told you. I had hedged against this question as 
a vampire and now it completely overwhelmed me, and in that state I had no 
desire to live. Well, this produced in me, as it can in humans, a craving for 
that which will satisfy at least physical desire. I think I used it as an 
excuse. I have told you what the kill means to vampires; you can imagine from 
what I've said the difference between a rat and a man.
"I went down into the street after Lestat and walked for blocks. The streets 
were muddy then, the actual blocks islands above the gutters, and the entire 
city so dark compared to the cities of today. The lights were as beacons in a 
black sea. Even with morning rising slowly, only the dormers and high porches of 
the houses were emerging from the dark, and to a mortal man the narrow streets I 
found were like pitch. Am I damned? Am I from the devil? Is my very nature that 
of a devil? I was asking myself over and over. And if it is, why then do I 
revolt against it, tremble when Babette hurls a flaming lantern at me, turn away 
in disgust when Lestat kills? What have I become in becoming a vampire? Where am 
I to go? And all the while, as the death wish caused me to neglect my thirst, my 
thirst grew hotter; my veins were veritable threads of pain in my flesh; my 
temples throbbed; and finally I could stand it no longer. Torn apart by the wish 
to take no action-to starve, to wither in thought on the one hand; and driven to 
kill on the other-I stood in an empty, desolate street and heard the sound of a 
child crying.
"She was within. I drew close to the walls, trying in my habitual detachment 
only to understand the nature of her cry. She was weary and aching and utterly 
alone. She had been crying for so long now, that soon she would stop from sheer 
exhaustion. I slipped my hand up under the heavy wooden shutter and pulled it so 
the bolt slipped. There she sat in the dark room beside a dead woman, a woman 
who'd been dead for some days. The room itself was cluttered with trunks and 
packages as though a number of people had been packing to leave; but the mother 
lay half clothed, her body already in decay, and no one else was there but the 
child. It was moments before she saw me, but when she did she began to tell me 
that I must do something to help her mother. She was only five at- most, and 
very thin, and her face was stained with dirt and tears. She begged me to help. 
They had to take a ship, she said, before the plague came; their father was 
waiting. She began to shake her mother now and to cry in the most pathetic and 
desperate way; and then she looked at me again and burst into the greatest flow 
of tears.
"You must understand that by now I was burning with physical need to drink. I 
could not have made it through another day without feeding. But there were 
alternatives: rats abounded in the streets, and somewhere very near a dog was 
howling hopelessly. I might have Pied the room had I chosen and fed and gotten 
back easily. But the question pounded in me: Am I dammed? If so, why do I feel 
such pity for her, for her gaunt face? Why do I wish to touch her tiny, soft 
arms, hold her now on my knee as I am doing, feel her bend her head to my chest 
as I gently touch the satin hair? Why do I do this? If I am damned I must want 
to kill her, I must want to make her nothing but food for a cursed existence, 
because being damned I must hate her.
"And when I thought of this, I saw Babette's face contorted with hatred when she 
had held the lantern waiting to light it, and I saw Lestat in my mind and hated 
him, and I felt, yes, damned and this is hell, and in that instant I had bent 
down and driven hard into her soft, small neck and, hearing her tiny cry, 
whispered even as I felt the hot blood on my lips, `It's only for a moment and 
there'll be no more pain.' But she was locked to me, and I was soon incapable of 
saying anything. For four years I had not savored a human; for four years I 
hadn't really known; and now I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm, and such 
a heart not the heart of a man or an animal, but the rapid, tenacious heart of 
the child, beating harder and harder, refusing to die, beating like a tiny fist 
beating on a door, crying, `I will not die, I will not die, I cannot die, I 
cannot die . . . .' I think I rose to my feet still locked to her, the heart 
pulling my heart faster with no hope of cease, the rich blood rushing too fast 
for me, the room reeling, and then, despite myself, I was staring over her bent 
head, her open mouth, down through the gloom at the mother's face; and through 
the half-mast lids. her eyes gleamed at me as if they were alive! I threw the 
child down. She lay like a jointless doll. And turning in blind horror of the 
mother to flee, I saw the window filled with a familiar shape. It was Lestat, 
who backed away from it now laughing, his body bent as he danced in the mud 
street. `Louis, Louis,' he taunted me, and pointed a long, bone-thin finger at 
me, as if to say he'd caught me in the act. And now he bounded over the sill, 
brushing me aside, and grabbed the mother's stinking body from the bed and made 
to dance with her."
"Good God!" whispered the boy.
"Yes, I might have said the same," said the vampire. "He stumbled over the child 
as he pulled the mother along in widening circles, singing as he danced, her 
matted hair falling in her face, as her head snapped back and a black fluid 
poured out of her mouth. He threw her down. I was out of the window and running 
down the street, and he was running after me. `Are you afraid of me, Louis?' he 
shouted. `Are you afraid? The child's alive, Louis, you left her breathing. 
Shall I go back and make her a vampire? We could use her, Louis, and think of 
all the pretty dresses we could buy for her. Louis, wait, Louis! I'll go back 
for her if you say!' And so he ran after me all the way back to the hotel, all 
the way across the rooftops, where I hoped to lose him, until I leaped in the 
window of the parlor and turned in rage and slammed the window shut. He hit it, 
arms outstretched, like a bird who seeks to By through glass, and shook the 
frame. I was utterly out of my mind. I went round and round the room looking for 
some way to kill him. I pictured his body burned to a crisp on the roof below. 
Reason had altogether left me, so that I was consummate rage, and when he came 
through the broken glass, we fought as we'd never fought before. It was hell 
that stopped me, the thought of hell, of us being two souls in hell that 
grappled in hatred. I lost my confidence, my purpose, my grip. I was down on the 
floor then, and he was standing over me, his eyes cold, though his chest heaved. 
`You're a fool, Louis,' he said. His voice was calm. It was so calm it brought 
me around. `The sun's coming up,' he said, his chest heaving slightly from the 
struggle, his eyes narrow as he looked at the window. I'd never seen him quite 
like this. The fight had got the better of him in some way; or something had. 
`Get in your coffin,' he said to me, without even the slightest anger. `But 
tomorrow night . . . we talk.'
"Well, I was more than slightly amazed. Lestat talk! I couldn't imagine this. 
Never had Lestat and I really talked. I think I have described to you with 
accuracy our sparring matches, our angry go-rounds."
"He was desperate for the money, for your houses," said the boy. "Or was it that 
he was as afraid to be alone as you were?"
"These questions occurred to me. It even occurred to me that Lestat meant to 
kill me, some way that I didn't know. You see, I wasn't sure then why I awoke 
each evening when I did, whether it was automatic when the deathlike sleep left 
me, and why it happened sometimes earlier than at other times. It was one of the 
things Lestat would not explain. And he was often up before me. He was my 
superior in all the mechanics, as I've indicated. And I shut the coin that 
morning with a kind of despair.
"I should explain now, though, that the shutting of the coffin is always 
disturbing. It is rather like going under a modern anesthetic on an operating 
table. Even a casual mistake on the part of an intruder might mean death."
"But how could he have killed you? He couldn't have exposed you to the light; he 
couldn't have stood it himself."
"This is true, but rising before me he might have nailed my coffin shut. Or set 
it afire. The principal thing was, I didn't know what he might do, what he might 
know that I still did not know.
"But there was nothing to be done about it then, and with thoughts of the dead 
woman and child still in any brain, and the sun rising, I had no energy left to 
argue with him, and lay down to miserable dreams."
"You do dream!" said the boy.
"Often," said the vampire. "I wish sometimes that I did not. For such dreams, 
such long and clear dreams I never had as a mortal; and such twisted nightmares 
I never had either. In my early days, these dreams so absorbed me that often it 
seemed I fought waking as long as I could and lay sometimes for hours ' g of 
these dreams until the night was half gone; and dazed by them I often wandered 
about seeking to understand their meaning. They were in many ways as elusive as 
the dreams of mortals. I dreamed of my brother, for instance, that he was near 
me in some state between life and death, calling to me for help. And often I 
dreamed of Babette; and often-almost always-there was a great wasteland backdrop 
to my dreams, that wasteland of night rd seen when cursed by Babette as I've 
told you. It was as if all figures walked and talked on the desolate home of my 
damned soul. I don't remember what I dreamed that day, perhaps because I 
remember too well what Lestat and I discussed the following evening. I see 
you're anxious for that, too.
"Well, as I've said, Lestat amazed me in his new calm, his thoughtfulness. But 
that evening I didn't wake to find him the same way, not at first. There were 
women in the parlor. The candles were a few, scattered on the small table and 
the carved buffet, and Lestat had his arm around one woman and was kissing her: 
She was very drunk and very beautiful, a great drugged doll of a woman with her 
careful coif falling slowly down on her bare shoulders and over her partially 
bared breasts. The other woman sat over a ruined supper table drinking a glass 
of wine. I could see that the three of them had dined (Lestat pretending to dine 
. . . you would be surprised how people do not notice that a vampire is only 
pretending to eat), and the woman at the table was bored. All this put me in a 
fit of agitation. I did not know what Lestat was up to. If I went into the room, 
the woman would turn her attentions to me. And what was to happen, I couldn't 
imagine, except that Lestat meant for us to kill them both. The woman on the 
settee with him was already teasing about his kisses, his coldness, his lack of 
desire for her. And the woman at the table watched with black almond eyes that 
seemed to be filled with satisfaction; when Lestat rose and came to her, putting 
his hands on her bare white arms, she brightened. Bending now to kiss her, he 
saw me through the crack in the door. And his eyes just stared at me for a 
moment, and then he went on talking with the ladies. He bent down and blew out 
the candles on the table. `It's too dark in here,' said the woman on the couch. 
`Leave us alone,' said the other woman. Lestat sat down and beckoned her to sit 
in his lap. And she did, putting her left arm around his neck, her right hand 
smoothing back his yellow hair. `Your skin's icy,' she said, recoiling slightly. 
`Not always,' said Lestat; and then he buried his face in the flesh of her neck. 
I was watching all this with fascination. Lestat was masterfully clever and 
utterly vicious, but I didn't know how clever he was until he sank his teeth 
into her now, his thumb pressing down on her throat, his other arm locking her, 
tight, so that he drank his fill without the other woman even knowing. `Your 
friend has no head for wine,' he said slipping out of the chair and seating the 
unconscious woman there, her arms folded under her face on the table. `She's 
stupid,' said the other woman, who had gone to the window and had been looking 
out at the lights. New Orleans was then a city of many low buildings, as you 
probably know. And on such clear nights as this, the lamplit streets were 
beautiful from the high windows of this new Spanish hotel; and the stars of 
those days bung low over such dim light as they do at sea. `I can warm that cold 
skin of yours better than she can.' She turned to Lestat, and I must confess I 
was feeling some relief that he would now take care of her as well. But he 
planned nothing so simple. `Do you think so?' he said to her. He took her hand, 
and she said, `Why, you're warm"'
"You mean the blood had warmed him," said the boy.
"Oh, yes," said the vampire. "After killing, a vampire is as warm as you are 
now." And he started to resume; then, glancing at the boy, he smiled. "As I was 
saying . . . Lestat now held the woman's hand in his and said that the other had 
warmed him. Isis face, of course, was flushed; much altered. He drew her close 
now, and she kissed him, remarking through her laughter that he was a veritable 
furnace of passion.
" `Ah, but the price is high,' he said to her, affecting sadness. `Your pretty 
friend . . : He shrugged his shoulders. `I exhausted her.' And he stood back as 
if inviting the woman to walk to the table. And she did, a look of superiority 
on her small features. She bent down to see her friend, but then lost 
interest--until, she saw something. It was a napkin. It had caught the last 
drops of blood from the wound in the throat. She picked it up, straining to see 
it in the darkness. `Take down your hair,' said Lestat softly. And she dropped 
it, indifferent, and took down the last tresses, so that her hair fell blond and 
wavy down her back. `Soft,' he said, `so soft. I picture you that way, lying on 
a bed of satin.'
" `Such things you say!' she scoffed and turned her back on him playfully.
" `Do you know what manner of bed?' he asked. And she laughed and said his bed, 
she could imagine. She looked back at him as he advanced; and, never once 
looking away from her, he gently tipped the body of her friend, so that it fell 
backwards from the chair and lay with staring eyes upon the floor. The woman 
gasped. She scrambled away from the corpse, nearly upsetting a small end table. 
The candle went over and went out. ` "Put out the light . . . and then put out 
the light," ' Lestat said softly. And then he took her into his arms like a 
struggling moth and sank his teeth into her."
"But what were you thinking as you watched?" asked the boy. "Did you want to 
stop him the way you wanted to stop him from killing Freniere?"
"No," said the vampire. "I could not have stopped him. And you must understand I 
knew that he killed humans every night. Animals gave him no satisfaction 
whatsoever. Animals were to be banked on when all else failed, but never to be 
chosen. If I felt any sympathy for the women, it was buried deep in my own 
turmoil. I still felt in my chest the little hammer heart of that starving 
child; I still burned with the questions of my own divided nature. I was angry 
that Lestat had staged this show for me, waiting till I woke to kill the women; 
and I wondered again if I might somehow break loose from him and felt both 
hatred and my own weakness more than ever.
"Meantime, he propped their lovely corpses at the table and went about the room 
lighting all the candles until it blazed as if for a wedding. `Come in, Louis,' 
he said. `I would have arranged an escort for you, but I know what a man you are 
about choosing your own. Pity Mademoiselle Freniere likes to hurl flaming 
lanterns. It makes a party unwieldy, don't you think? Especially for a hotel?' 
He seated the blond-haired girl so that her head lay to one side against the 
damask back of the chair, and the darker woman lay with her chin resting just 
above her breasts; this one had blanched, and her features had a rigid look to 
them already, as though she was one of those women in whom the fire of 
personality makes beauty. But the other looked only as if she slept; and I was 
not sure that she was even dead. Lestat had made two gashes, one in her throat 
and one above her left breast, and both still bled freely. He lifted her wrist 
now, and slitting it with a knife, filled two wine glasses and bade me to sit 
down.
" `I'm leaving you,' I said to him at once. `I wish to tell you that now.'
" `I thought as much,' he answered, sitting back in the chair, `and I thought as 
well that you would make a flowery announcement. Tell me what a monster I am; 
what a vulgar fiend'
" `I make no judgments upon you. I'm not interested in you. I am interested in 
my own nature now, and I've come to believe I can't trust you to tell me the 
truth about it. You use knowledge for personal power,' I told him. And I 
suppose, in the manner of many people making such an announcement, I was not 
looking to him at all. I was mainly listening to my own words. But now I saw 
that his face was once again the way it had been when he'd said we would talk. 
He was listening to me. I was suddenly at a loss. I felt that gulf between us as 
painfully as ever.
" 'Why did you become a vampire?' I blurted out. `And why such a vampire as you 
are! Vengeful and delighting in taking human life even when you have no need. 
This girl . . . why did you kill her when one would have done? And way did you 
frighten her so before you killed her? And why have you propped her here in some 
grotesque manner, as if tempting the gods to strike you down for your 
blasphemy?'
"All this he listened to without speaking, and in the pause that followed I 
again felt at a loss. Lestat's eyes were large and thoughtful; I'd seen them 
that way before, but I couldn't remember when, certainly not when talking to me.
" `What do you think a vampire is?' he asked me sincerely.
" `I don't pretend to know. You pretend to know. What is it?' I asked. And to 
this he answered nothing. It was as if he sensed the insincerity of it, the 
spite. He just sat there looking at me with the same still expression. Then I 
said, `I know that after leaving you, I shall try to find out. I'll travel the 
world, if I have to, to find other vampires. I know they must exist; I don't 
know of any reasons why they shouldn't exist in great numbers. And I'm confident 
I shall find vampires who have more in common with me than I with you. Vampires 
who understand knowledge as I do and have used their superior vampire nature to 
learn secrets of which you don't even dream. If you haven't told me everything, 
I shall find things out for myself or from them, when I find them."
"He shook his head. `Louis!' he said. `You are in love with your mortal nature! 
You chase after the phantoms of your former self. Freniere, his sister . . . 
these are images for you of what you were and what you still long to be. And in 
your romance with mortal life, you're dead to your vampire nature!'
"I objected to this at once. 'My vampire nature has been for me the greatest 
adventure of my life; ail that went before it was confused, clouded; I went 
through mortal life like a blind man groping from solid object to solid object. 
It was only when I became a vampire that I respected for the first time all of 
life. I never saw a living, pulsing human being until I was a vampire; I never 
knew what life was until it ran out in a red gush over my lips, my hands!' I 
found myself staring at the two women, . the darker one now turning a terrible 
shade of blue. The blonde was breathing. `She's not dead!' I said to him 
suddenly.
"'I know. Let her alone,' he said. He lifted her wrist and made a new gash by 
the scab of the other and filled his glass. `All that you say makes sense,' he 
said to me, taking a drink. `You are an intellect. I've never been. What I've 
learned I've learned from listening to men talk, not from books. I never went to 
school long enough. But I'm not stupid, and you must listen to me because you 
are in danger. You do not know your vampire nature. You are like an adult who, 
looking back on his childhood, realizes that he never appreciated it. You 
cannot, as a man, go back to the nursery and play with your toys, asking for the 
love and care to be showered on you again simply because now you know their 
worth. So it is with you and mortal nature. You've given it up. You no longer 
look "through a glass darkly." But you cannot pass back to the world of human 
warmth with your new eyes'
" `I know that well enough!' I said. `But what is it that is our nature! If I 
can live from the blood of animals, why should I not live from the blood of 
animals rather than go through the world bringing misery and death to human 
creatures!'
" `Does it bring you happiness?' he asked. `You wander through the night, 
feeding on rats like a pauper and then moon at Babette's window, filled with 
care, yet helpless as the goddess who came by night to watch Endymion sleep and 
could not have him. And suppose you could hold her in your arms and she would 
look on you without horror or disgust, what then? A few short years to watch her 
suffer every prick of mortality and then die before your eyes? Does this give 
happiness? This is insanity, Louis. This is vain. And what truly lies before you 
is vampire nature, which is killing. For I guarantee you that if you walk the 
streets tonight and strike down a woman as rich and beautiful as Babbette and 
suck her blood until she drops at your feet you will have no hunger left for 
Babette's profile in the candlelight or for listening by the window for the 
sound of her voice. You will be filled, Louis, as you were meant to be, with all 
the life that you can hold; and you will have hunger when that's gone for the 
same, and the same, and the same. The red in this glass will be just as red; the 
roses on the wallpaper just as delicately drawn. And you'll see the moon the 
same way, and the same the flicker of a candle. And with that same sensibility 
that you cherish you will see death in all its beauty, life as it is only known 
on the very point of death. Don't you understand that, Louis? You alone of all 
creatures can see death that way with impunity. You . . . alone . . . under the 
rising moon . . . can strike like the hand of God!'
"He sat back now and drained the glass, and his eyes moved over the unconscious 
woman. Her breasts heaved and her eyebrows knit as if she were coming around: A 
moan escaped her lips. He'd never spoken such words to me before, and I had not 
thought him capable of it. `Vampires are killers,' he said now. `Predators. 
Whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment. The ability to see a 
human life in its entirety, not with any mawkish sorrow but with a thrilling 
satisfaction in being the end of that life, in having a hand in the divine 
plan.'
" `That is how you see it!' I protested. The girl moaned again; her face was 
very white. Her head rolled against the back of the chair.
" `That is the way it is,' he answered. `You talk of finding other vampires! 
Vampires are killers! They don't want you or your sensibility) They'll see you 
coming long before you see them, and they'll see your flaw; and, distrusting 
you, they'll seek to kill you. They'd seek to kill you even if you were like me. 
Because they are lone predators and seek for companionship no more than cats in 
the jungle. They're jealous of their secret and of their territory; and if you 
find one or more of them together it will be for safety only, and one will be 
the slave of the other, the way you are of me.'
" `I'm not your slave,' I said to him. But even as he spoke I realized I'd been 
his slave all along.
" `That's how vampires increase . . . through slavery. How else?" he asked. He 
took the girl's wrist again, and she cried out as the knife cut. She opened her 
eyes slowly as he held her wrist over the glass. She blinked and strained to 
keep them open. It was as if a veil covered her eyes. `You're tired, aren't 
you?' he asked her. She gazed at him as if she couldn't really see him. `Tired!' 
he said, now leaning close and staring into her eyes. `You want to sleep.' `Yes 
. . : she moaned softly. And he picked, her up and took her into the bedroom. 
Our coffins rested on the carpet and against the wall; there was a velvet-draped 
bed. Lestat did not put her on the bed; he lowered her slowly into his coffin. 
`What are you doing?' I asked him, coming to the door sill. The girl was looking 
around like a terrified child. `No . . : she was moaning. And then, as he closed 
the lid, she screamed. She continued to scream within the coffin.
" `Why do you do this, Lestat?' I asked.
" `I like to do it,' he said. `I enjoy it.' He looked at me. `I don't say that 
you have to enjoy it. Take your aesthete's tastes to purer things. Kill them 
swiftly if you will, but do it! Learn that you're a killer! Ah!' He threw up his 
hands in disgust. The girl had stopped screaming. Now he drew up a little 
curved-legged chair beside the coffin and, crossing his legs, he looked at the 
coffin lid. His was a black varnished coffin, not a pure rectangular box as they 
are now, but tapered at both ends and widest where the corpse might lay his 
hands upon his chest. It suggested the human form. It
opened, and the girl sat up astonished, wild-eyed, her lips blue and trembling. 
`Lie down, love,' he said to her, and pushed her back; and she lay, 
near-hysterical, staring up at him. `You're dead, love,' he said to her; and she 
screamed and turned desperately in the coffin like a fish, as if her body could 
escape through the sides, through the bottom. `It's a coffin, a coffin!' she 
cried. `Let me out.'
" `But we all must lie in cons, eventually,' he said to her. `Lie still, love. 
This is your coffin. Most of us never get to know what it feels like. You know 
what it feels like!' he said to her. I couldn't tell whether she was listening 
or not, or just going wild. But she saw me in the doorway, and then she lay 
still, looking at Lestat and then at me. `Help me!' she said to me.
"Lestat looked at me. 'I expected you to feel these things instinctually, as I 
did,' he said. When I gave you that first kill, I thought you would hunger for 
the next and the next, that you would go to each human life as if to a full cup, 
the way I had. But you didn't. And all this time I suppose I kept from 
straightening you out because you were best weaker. I'd watch you playing shadow 
in the night, staring at the falling rain, and I'd think, He's easy to manage, 
he's simple. But you're weak, Louis. You're a mark. For vampires and now for 
humans alike. This thing with Babette has exposed us both. It's as if you want 
us both to be destroyed.'
"'I can't stand to watch what you're doing,' I said, turning my back. The girl's 
eyes were burning into my flesh. She lay, all the time he spoke, staring at me.
"You can stand it!' he said. `I saw you last night with that child. You're a 
vampire, the same as I am!'
"He stood up and came towards me, but the girl rose again and he turned to shove 
her down. '13o you think we should make her a vampire? Share our lives with 
her?' he asked. Instantly I said, `No!'
" `Why, because she's nothing but a whore?' he asked. `A damned expensive whore 
at that,' he said.
" `Can she live now? Or has she lost too much?' I asked him.
" `Touching)" he said. `She can't live.'
"'Then kill her.' She began to scream. He just sat there. I turned around. He 
was smiling, and the girl had turned her face to the satin and was sobbing. Tier 
reason had almost entirely left her; she was crying and praying. She was praying 
to the Virgin to save her, her hands over her face now, now over her head, the 
wrist smearing blood in her hair and on the satin. I bent over the coffin. She 
was dying, it was true; her eyes were burning, but the tissue around them was 
already bluish and now she smiled. `You won't let me die, will you?' she 
whispered. `You'll save me.' Lestat reached over and took her wrist. 'But it's 
too late, love,' he said. `Look at your wrist, your breast' And then he touched 
the wound in her throat. She put her hands to her throat and gasped, her mouth 
open, the scream strangled. I stared at Lestat. I could not understand why he 
did this. His face was as smooth as mine is now, more animated for the blood, 
but cold and without emotion.
"He did not leer like a stage villain, nor hunger for her suffering as if the 
cruelty fed him. He simply watched her. `I never meant to be bad,' she was 
crying. `I only did what I had to do. You won't let this happen to me, You'll 
let me go. I can't die like this, I can't!' She was sobbing, the sobs dry and 
thin. `You'll let me go. I have to go to the priest. You'll let me go.' " `But 
my friend is a priest,' said Lestat, smiling. As if he'd just thought of it as a 
joke. `This is your funeral, dear. You see, you were at a dinner party and you 
died. But God has given you another chance to be absolved. Don't you see? Tell 
him your sins'
"She shook her head at first, and then she looked at me again with those 
pleading eyes. `Is it true?' she whispered. `Well,' said Lestat, `I suppose 
you're not contrite, dear. I shall have to shut the lid!'
" `Stop this, Lestat!' I shouted at him. The girl was screaming again, and I 
could not stand the sight of it any longer. I bent down to her and took her 
hand. `I can't remember my sins,' she said, just as I was looking at her wrist, 
resolved to kill her. `You mustn't try. Tell God only that you are sorry,' I 
said, `and then you'll die and it will be over.' She lay back, and her eyes 
shut. I sank my teeth into her wrist and began to suck her dry. She stirred once 
as if dreaming and said a name; and then, when I felt her heartbeat reach that 
hypnotic slowness, I drew back from her, dizzy, confused for the moment, my 
hands reaching for the door frame. I saw her as if in a dream. The candles 
glared in the corner of my eye. I saw her lying utterly still. And Lestat sat 
composed beside her, like a mourner. Ibis face was still. `Louis,' he said to 
me. `Don't you understand? Peace will only come to you when you can do this 
every night of your life. There is nothing else. But this is everything!' Isis 
voice was almost tender as he spoke, and he rose and put both his hands on my 
shoulders. I walked into the parlor, shying away from his touch but not resolute 
enough to push him off. `Come with me, out into the streets. It's late. You 
haven't drunk enough. Let me show you what you are. Really! Forgive me if I 
bungled it, left too much to nature. Come!'
" `I can't bear it, Lestat,' I said to him. `You chose your companion badly.'
" `But Luis,' he said, `you haven't tried!.'
The vampire stopped. He was studying the boy. And the boy, astonished, said 
nothing.
"It was true what he'd said. I had not drunk enough; and shaken by the girl's 
fear, I let him lead me out of the hotel, down the back stairs. People were 
coming now from the Conde Street ballroom, and the narrow street was jammed. 
There were supper parties in the hotels, and the planter families were lodged in 
town in great numbers and we passed through them like a nightmare. My agony was 
unbearable. Never since I was a human being had I felt such mental pain. It was 
because all of Lestat's words had made sense to me. I knew peace only when I 
killed, only for that minute; and there was no question in my mind that the 
killing of anything less than a human being brought nothing but a vague longing, 
the discontent which had brought me close to humans, to watch their lives 
through glass. I was no vampire. And in my pain, I asked irrationally, like a 
child, Could I not return? Could I not be human again? Even as the blood of that 
girl was warm in me and I felt that physical thrill and strength, I asked that 
question. The faces of humans passed me like candle flames in the night dancing 
on dark waves. I was sinking into the darkness. I was weary of longing. I was  
g around and around in the street, looking at the stars and thinking, Yes, it's 
true. I know what he is saying is true, that when I kill there is no longing; 
and I can't bear this truth, I can't bear it.
"Suddenly there was one of those arresting moments. The street was utterly 
quiet. We had strayed far from the main part of the old town and were near the 
ramparts. There were no lights, only the fire in a window and the far-off sound 
of people laughing. But no one here. No one near us. I could feel the breeze 
suddenly from the river and the hot air of the night rising and Lestat near me, 
so still he might have been made of stone. Over the long, low row of pointed 
roofs were the massive shapes of oak trees in the dark, great swaying forms of 
myriad sounds under the lowhung stars. The pain for the moment was gone; the 
confusion was gone. I closed my eyes and heard the wind and the sound of water 
flowing softly, swiftly in the river. It was enough, for one moment. And I knew 
that it would not endure, that it would fly away from me like something torn out 
of my arms, and I would By after it, more desperately lonely than any creature 
under God, to get it back. And then a voice beside e rumbled deep in the sound 
of the night, a drumbeat as the moment ended, saying, `Do what it is your nature 
to do. This is but a taste of it. Do what it is your nature to do.' And the 
moment was gone. I stood like the girl in the parlor in the hotel, dazed and 
ready for the slightest suggestion. I was nodding at Lestat as he nodded at me. 
`Pain is terrible for you,' he said. `You feel it like no other creature because 
you are a vampire. You don't want it to go on.'
" `No,' I answered him. `I'll feel as I felt with her, wed to her and 
weightless, caught as if by a dance.'
" `That and more.' His hand tightened on mine. `Don't turn away from it, come 
with me.'
"He led me quickly through the street, turning every time I hesitated, his hand 
out for mine, a smile on his lips, his presence as marvelous to me as the night 
he'd come in my mortal life and told me we would be vampires. `Evil is a point 
of view,' he whispered now. ' We are immortal. And what we have before us are 
the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know 
without regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the 
richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we 
are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking 
limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms. I want a child 
tonight. I am like a mother. . . I want a child!"
"I should have known what he meant. I did not. He had me mesmerized, enchanted. 
He was playing to me as he had when I was mortal; he was leading me. He was 
saying, `Your pain will end.'
"We'd come to a street of lighted windows. It was a place of rooming houses, 
sailors, flatboat men. We entered a narrow door; and then, in a hollow stone 
passage in which I could hear my own breath like the wind, he crept along the 
wall until his shadow leapt out in the light of a doorway beside the shadow of 
another man, their heads bent together, their whispers like the rustling of dry 
leaves. `What is it?' I drew near him as he came back, afraid suddenly this 
exhilaration in me would die. I saw again that nightmare landscape I'd seen when 
I spoke With Babette; I felt the chill of loneliness, the chill of guilt. `She's 
there!' he said. `Your wounded one. Your daughter.'
" `What do you say, what are you talking about!'
" `You've saved her,' he whispered. `I. knew it. You left the window wide on her 
and her dead mother, and people passing in the street brought her here.'
"`The child. The little girl!' I gasped. But he was already leading me through 
the door to stand at the end of the long ward of wooden beds, each with a child 
beneath a narrow white blanket, one candle at the end of the ward, where a nurse 
bent over a small desk. We walked down the aisle between the rows. `Starving 
children, orphans,' he said: `Children of plague and fever.' He stopped. I saw 
the little girl lying in the bed. And then the man was coming, and he was 
whispering with Lestat; such care for the sleeping little ones. Someone in 
another room was crying. The nurse rose and hurried away.
"And now the doctor bent and wrapped the child in the blanket. Lestat had taken 
money from his pocket and set it on the foot of the bed. The doctor was saying 
how glad he was we'd come for her, how most of them were orphans; they came in 
on the ships, sometimes orphans too young even to tell which body was that of 
their mother. He thought Lestat was the father.
"And in moments, Lestat was running through the streets with her, the white of 
the blanket gleaming against his dark coat and cape; and even to my expert 
vision, as I ran after him it seemed sometimes as if the blanket dew through the 
night with no one holding it, a shifting shape traveling on the wind like a leaf 
stood upright and sent scurrying along a passage, trying to gain the wind all 
the while and truly take flight. I caught him finally as we approached the lamps 
near the Place d'Armes. The child lay pale on his shoulder, her cheeks still 
full like plums, though she was drained and near death. She opened her eyes, or 
rather the lids slid back; and beneath the long curling lashes I saw a streak of 
white. `Lestat, what are you doing? Where are you taking her?' I demanded. But I 
knew too well. He was heading for the hotel and meant to take her into our room.
"The corpses were as we left them, one neatly set in the coffin as if an 
undertaker had already attended her, the other in her chair at the table. Lestat 
brushed past them as if he didn't see them, while I watched him in fascination. 
The candles had all burned down, and the only light was that of the moon and the 
street. I could see his iced and gleaming profile as he set the child down on 
the pillow. `Come here, Louis, you haven't fed enough, I know you haven't,' he 
said with the same calm, convincing voice he had used skillfully all evening. He 
held my hand in his, his own warm and tight. `See her, Louis, how plump and 
sweet she looks, as if even death can't take her freshness; the will to live is 
too strong! He might make a sculpture of her tiny lips and rounded hands, but he 
cannot her faded You remember, the way you wanted her when you saw her in that 
room.' I resisted him. I didn't
want to kill her. I hadn't wanted to last night. And then suddenly I remembered 
two conflicting things and was 
torn in agony: I remembered the powerful beating of her heart against mine and I 
hungered for it, hungered for it 
so badly I tamed my back on her in the bed and would have rushed out of the room 
had not Lestat held me fast; 
and I remembered her mother's face and that moment of horror when I'd dropped 
the child and he'd come into 
the room. But he wasn't mocking me now; he was confusing me. `You want her, 
Louis. Don't you see, once 
you've taken her, then you can take whomever you wish. You wanted her last night 
but you weakened, and that's 
why she's not dead.' I could feel it was true, what he said. I could feel again 
that ecstasy of being pressed to her, 
her little heart going and going. `She's too strong for me . . . her heart, it 
wouldn't give up,' I said to him. `Is she 
so strong?' he smiled. He drew me close to him. `Take her, Louis, I know you 
want her.' And I did. I drew close 
to the bed now and just watched her. Her chest barely moved with her breath, and 
one small hand was tangled in 
her long, gold hair. I couldn't bear it, looking at her, wanting her not to die 
and wanting her; and the more I 
looked at her, the more I could taste her skin, feel my arm sliding under her 
back and pulling her up to me, feeling 
her soft neck. Soft, soft, that's what she was, so soft. I tried to tell myself 
it was best for her to die--what was to
become of her? but these were lying thoughts. I wanted her! And so I took her in 
my arms and held her, her 
burning cheek on mine, her hair ` down over my wrists and brushing my eyelids, 
the sweet perfume of a child 
strong and pulsing in spite of sickness and death. She moaned how, stirred in 
her sleep, and that was more than I 
could bear. rd kill her before rd let her wake and know it. I went into her 
throat and heard Lestat saying to me 
strangely, `Just a little tear. It's just a little throat.' And I obeyed him.
"I won't tell you again what it was like, except that it caught me up just as it 
had done before, and as killing always does, only more; so that my knees bent 
and I half lay on the bed, sucking her dry; that heart pounding again that would 
not slow, would not give up. And suddenly, as I went on and on, the instinctual 
part of me waiting, waiting for the slowing of the heart which would mean death, 
Lestat wrenched me from her. `But she's not dead,' I whispered. But it was over. 
The furniture of the room emerged from the darkness. I sat stunned, staring at 
her, too weak to move, my head rolling back against the headboard of the bed, my 
hands pressing down on the velvet spread. Lestat was snatching her up, talking 
to her, saying a name. 'Claudia, Claudia, listen to me, come round, Claudia.' He 
was carrying her now out of the bedroom into the parlor, and his voice was so 
soft I barely heard him. `You're ill, do you hear me? You must do as I tell you 
to get well.' And then, in the pause that followed, I came to my senses. I 
realized what he was doing, that he had cut his wrist and given it to her and 
she was drinking. `That's it dear; more,' he was saying to her. `You must drink 
it to get well.'
" `Damn you!' I shouted, and he hissed at me with blazing eyes. He sat on the 
settee with her locked to his wrist. I saw her white hand clutching at his 
sleeve, and I could see his chest heaving for breath and his face contorted the 
way I'd never seen it. He let out a moan and whispered again to her to go on; 
and when I moved from the threshold, he glared at me again, as if to say, `I'll 
kill you!'
" `But why, Lestat?' I whispered to him. He was trying now to push her off, and 
she wouldn't let go. With her fingers locked around his fingers and arm she held 
the wrist to her mouth, a growl coming out of her. `Stop, stop!' he said to her. 
He was clearly in pain. He pulled back from her and held her shoulders with both 
hands. She tried desperately to reach leis wrist with leer teeth, but she 
couldn't; and then she looked at him with the most innocent astonishment. He 
stood back, his hand out lest she move. Then he clapped a handkerchief on his 
wrist and backed away from her, toward the bell rope. He pulled it sharply, his 
eyes still fixed on her.
" `What have you done, Lestat?' I asked him. `What have you done?' I stared at 
her. She sat composed, revived, filled with life, no sign of pallor or weakness 
in her, her legs stretched out straight on the damask, her white gown soft and 
thin like an angel's gown around her small form. She was looking at Lestat. `Not 
me,' he said to her, `ever again. Do you understand? But I'll show you what to 
do!' When I tried to make him look at me and answer a as to what he was doing, 
he shook me off. a gave me such a blow with his arm that I hit the wall. Someone 
was knocking now. I knew what he meant to do. Once more I tried to reach out for 
' but he spun so fast I didn't even see him hit me. When I did see ' I was 
sprawled in the chair and he was opening the door. `Yes, come in, please, 
there's been an accident,' he said to the young slave boy. And then, shutting 
the door, he took him from behind, so that the boy never knew what happened. And 
even as he knelt over the body drinking, he beckoned for the child, who slid 
from the couch and went down on her knees and took the wrist offered her, 
quickly pushing back the cuff of the shirt. She gnawed as if she meant to devour 
his flesh, and then Lestat showed her what to do. He sat back and let her have 
the rest, his eye on the boy's chest, so that when the ' came, he bent forward 
and said, `No more, he's dying . . . . You must never drink after the heart 
stops or you'll be sick again, sick to death. Do you understand?' But she'd had 
enough and she sat next to ' their backs against the legs of the settee, their 
legs stretched out on the floor. The boy died in seconds. I felt weary and 
sickened, as if the night had lasted a thousand years. I sat there watching 
them, the child drawing close to Lestat now, snuggling near him as he slipped 
his arm around her, though his indifferent eyes remained fixed on the corpse. 
Then he looked up at me.
" `Where is Mamma?' asked the child softly. She had a voice equal to her 
physical beauty; clear like a little silver bell. It was sensual. She was 
sensual. Her eyes were as wide and clear as Babette's. You understand that I was 
barely aware of what all this meant. I knew what it might mean, but I was 
aghast. Now Lestat stood up and scooped her from the floor and came towards me. 
`She's our daughter,' he said. `You're going to live with us now.' He beamed at 
her, but his eyes were cold, as if it were all a horrible joke; then he looked 
at me, and his face had conviction. He pushed her towards me. I found her on my 
lap, my arms around her, feeling again how soft she was, how plump her skin was, 
like the skin of warm fruit, plums warmed by sunlight; her huge luminescent eyes 
were fixed on me with trusting curiosity. `This is Louis, and I am Lestat,' he 
said to her, dropping down beside her. She looked about and said that it was a 
pretty room, very pretty, but she wanted her mamma. He had his comb out and was 
running it through her hair, holding the locks so as not to pull with the comb; 
her hair was untangling and becoming like satin. She was the most beautiful 
child I'd ever seen, and now she glowed with the cold fire of a vampire. Her 
eyes were a woman's eyes, I could see it already. She would become white and 
spare like us but not lose her shape. I understood now what Lestat had said 
about death, what he meant. I touched her neck where the two red puncture wounds 
were bleeding just a little. I took Lestat's handkerchief from the floor and 
touched it to her neck. `Your mamma's left you with us. She wants you to be 
happy,' he was saying with that same immeasurable confidence. `She knows we can 
make you very happy.'
" `I want some more,' she said, turning to the corpse on the floor.
" `No, not tonight; tomorrow night,' said Lestat. And he went to take the lady 
out of his coffin. The child slid off my lap, and I followed her. She stood 
watching as Lestat put the two ladies and the slave boy into the bed. He brought 
the covers up to their chin. `Are they sick?' asked the child.
" `Yes, Claudia,' he said. `They're sick and they're dead. You see, they die 
when we drink from them.' He came towards her and swung her up into his arms 
again. We stood there with her between us. I was mesmerized by her, by her 
transformed, by her every gesture: She was not a child any longer, she was a 
vampire child. `Now, Louis was going to leave us,' said Lestat, his eyes moving 
from my face to hers. `He was going to go away. But now he's not. Because he 
wants to stay and take care of you and make you happy.' He looked at me. `You're 
not going, are you, Louis?'
" `You bastard!' I whispered to him. 'You fiend!'
" `Such language in front of your daughter,' he said.
" `I'm not your daughter,' she said with the silvery voice. `I'm my mamma's 
daughter.'
" `No, dear, not anymore,' he said to her. He glanced at the window, and then he 
shut the bedroom door behind us and turned the key in the lock. `You're our 
daughter, Louis's daughter and my daughter, do you see? Now, whom should you 
sleep with? Louis or me?' And then looking at me, he said, `Perhaps you should 
sleep with Louis. After all, when I'm tired . . . I'm not so kind."'
The Vampire Stopped. The boy said nothing. "A child vampire!" he whispered 
finally. The vampire glanced up suddenly as though startled, though his body 
made no movement. He glared at the tape recorder as if it were something 
monstrous.
The boy saw that the tape was almost out. Quickly, he opened his brief case and 
drew out a new cassette, clumsily fitting it into place. He looked at the 
vampire as he pressed the record button. The vampire's face looked weary, drawn, 
his cheekbones more prominent and his brilliant green eyes enormous. They had 
begun at dark, which had come early on this San Francisco winter night, and now 
it was just before ten P.m. The vampire straightened and smiled and said calmly, 
"We are ready to go on?"
"He'd done this to the little girl just to keep you with him?" asked the boy.
"That is difficult to say. It was a statement. I'm convinced that Lestat was a 
person who preferred not to think or talk about his motives or beliefs, even to 
himself. One of those people who must act. Such a person must be pushed 
considerably before he will open up and confess that there is method and thought 
to the way he lives. That is what had happened that night with Lestat. He'd been 
pushed to where he had to discover even for himself why he lived as he did. 
Keeping me with him, that was undoubtedly part of what pushed him. But I think, 
in retrospect, that he himself wanted to know his own reasons for killing, 
wanted to examine his own life. He was discovering when he spoke what he did 
believe. But he did indeed want me to remain. He lived with me in a way he could 
never have lived alone. And, as I've told you, I was careful never to sign any 
property over to him, which maddened him. That, he could not persuade me to do." 
The vampire laughed suddenly, "Look at all the other things he persuaded me to 
do! How strange. He could persuade me to kill a child, but not to part with my 
money." He shook his head. "But," he said, "it wasn't greed, really, as you can 
see. It was fear of him that made me tight with him."
" You speak of him as if he were dead. You say Lestat was this or was that. Is 
he dead?" asked the boy.
"I don't know," said the vampire. "I think perhaps he is. But I'll come to that. 
We were talking of Claudia, weren't we? There was something else I wanted to say 
about Lestat's motives that night. Lestat trusted no one, as you see. He was 
like a cat, by his own admission, a lone predator. Yet he had communicated with 
me that night; he had to some extent exposed himself simply by telling the 
truth. He had dropped his mockery, his condescension. He had forgotten his 
perpetual anger for just a little while. And this for Lestat was exposure. When 
we stood, alone in that dark street, I felt in him a communion with another I 
hadn't felt since I died. I rather think that he ushered Claudia into vampirism 
for revenge"
"Revenge, not only on you but on the world," suggested the boy.
"Yes. As I said, Lestat's motives for everything revolved around revenge"
"Was it all started with the father? With the school?"
"I don't know. I doubt it," said the vampire. "But I want to go on."
"Oh, please go on. You have to go on! I mean, it's only ten o'clock." The boy 
showed his watch.
The vampire looked at it, and then he smiled at the boy. The boy's face changed. 
It was blank as if from some sort of shock. "Are you still afraid of me?" asked 
the vampire.
The boy said nothing, but he shrank slightly from the edge of the table. His 
body elongated, his feet moved out over the bare boards and then contracted.
"I should think you'd be very foolish if you weren't," said the vampire. "But 
don't be. Shall we go on?"
"Please," said the boy. He gestured towards the machine.
'Well," the vampire began, "our life was much changed with Mademoiselle Claudia, 
as you can imagine. Her body died, yet her senses awakened much as mine had. And 
I treasured in her the signs of this. But I was not aware for quite a few days 
how much I wanted her, wanted to talk with her and be with her. At first, I 
thought only of protecting her from Lestat. I gathered her into my coffin every 
morning and would not let her out of my sight with him if possible. This was 
what Lestat wanted, and he gave little suggestions that he might do her harm. 'A 
starving child is a frightful sight,' he said to me, `a starving vampire even 
worse.' They'd hear her screams in Paris, he said, were he to lock her away to 
die. But all this was meant for me, to draw me close and keep me there. Afraid 
of fleeing alone, I would not conceive of risking it with Claudia. She was a 
child. She needed care.
"And there was much pleasure in caring for her. She forgot her five years of 
mortal life at once, or so it seemed, for she was mysteriously quiet. And from 
time to time I even feared that she had lost all sense, that the illness of her 
mortal life, combined with the great vampire shock, might have robbed her of 
reason; but this proved hardly the case. She was simply unlike Lestat and me to 
such an extent I couldn't comprehend her; for little child she was, but also 
fierce killer now capable of the ruthless pursuit of blood with all a child's 
demanding. And though Lestat still threatened me with danger to her, he did not 
threaten her at all but was loving to her, proud of her beauty, anxious to teach 
her that we must kill to live and that we ourselves could never die.
"The plague raged in the city then, as I've indicated, and he took her to the 
stinking cemeteries where the yellow fever and plague victims lay in heaps while 
the sounds of shovels never ceased all through the day and night. `This is 
death,' he told her, pointing to the decaying corpse of a woman, `which we 
cannot suffer. Our bodies will stay always as they are, fresh and alive; but we 
must never hesitate to bring death, because it is how we live.' And Claudia 
gazed on this with inscrutable liquid eyes.
"If there was not understanding in the early years, there was no smattering of 
fear. Mute and beautiful, she played with dolls, dressing, undressing them by 
the hour. Mute and beautiful, she killed. And I, transformed by Lestat's 
instruction, was now to seek out humans in much greater numbers. But it was not 
only the killing of them that soothed some pain in me which bad been constant in 
the dark, still nights on Pointe du Lac, when I sat with only the company of 
Lestat and the old man; it was their great, shifting numbers everywhere in 
streets which never grew quiet, cabarets which never shut their doors, balls 
which lasted till dawn, the music and laughter streaming out of the open 
windows; people all around me now, my pulsing victims, not seen with that great 
love I'd felt for my sister and Babette, but with some new detachment and need. 
And I did kill them, kills infinitely varied and great distances apart, as I 
walked with the vampire's sight and light movement through this teeming, 
burgeoning city, my victims surrounding me, seducing me, inviting me to their 
supper tables, their carriages, their brothels. I lingered only a short while, 
long enough to take what I must have, soothed in my great melancholy that the 
town gave me an endless train of magnificent strangers.
"For that was it. I fed on strangers. I drew only close enough to see the 
pulsing beauty, the unique expression, the new and passionate voice, then killed 
before those feelings of revulsion could be aroused in me, that fear, that 
sorrow.
"Claudia and Lestat might hunt and seduce, stay long in the company of the 
doomed victim, enjoying the splendid humor in his unwitting friendship with 
death. But I still could not bear it. And so to me, the swelling population was 
a mercy, a forest in which I was lost, unable to stop myself, whirling too fast 
for thought or pain, accepting again and again the invitation to death rather 
than extending it.
 "We lived meantime in one of my new Spanish town houses in the Rue Royale, a 
long, lavish upstairs flat above a 
shop I rented to a tailor, a hidden garden court behind us, a well secure 
against the street, with fitted wooden 
shutters and a barred carriage door-a place of far greater luxury and security 
than Pointe du Lac. Our servants 
were free people of color who left us to solitude before dawn for their own 
homes, and Lestat bought the very 
latest imports from France and Spain: crystal chandeliers and Oriental carpets, 
silk screens with aimed birds of 
paradise, canaries singing in great do domed, golden cages, and delicate marble 
Grecian gods and beautifully 
painted Chinese vases. I did not need the luxury anymore than I had needed it 
before, but I found myself 
enthralled with the new flood of art and craft and design, could stare at the 
intricate pattern of the carpets for 
hours, or watch the gleam of the lamplight change the somber colors of a Dutch 
painting.
"All this Claudia found wondrous, with the quiet awe of an unspoiled child, and 
marveled when Lestat hired a painter to make the walls of her room a magical 
forest of unicorns and golden birds and laden fruit trees over sparkling 
streams.
"An endless train of dressmakers and shoemakers and tailors came to our flat to 
outfit Claudia in the best of children's fashions, so that she was always a 
vision, not just of child beauty, with her curling lashes and her glorious 
yellow hair, but of the taste of finely trimmed bonnets and tiny lace gloves, 
flaring velvet coats and capes, and sheer white puffed-sleeve gowns with 
gleaming blue sashes. Lestat played with her as if she were a magnificent doll, 
and I played with her as if she were a magnificent doll; and it was her pleading 
that forced me to give up my rusty black for dandy jackets and silk ties and 
soft gray coats and gloves and black capes. Lestat thought the best color at all 
times for vampires was black, possibly the only aesthetic principle he 
steadfastly maintained, but he wasn't opposed to anything which smacked of style 
and excess. He loved the great figure we cut, the three of us in our box at the 
new French Opera House or the Theatre d'Orleans, to which we went as often as 
possible, Lestat having a passion for Shakespeare which surprised me, though he 
often dozed through the operas and woke just in time to invite some lovely lady 
to midnight supper, where he would use all his skill to make her love him 
totally, then dispatch her violently to heaven or hell and come home with her 
diamond ring to give to Claudia.
"And all this time I was educating Claudia, whispering in her tiny seashell ear 
that our eternal life was useless to us if we did not see the beauty around us, 
the creation of mortals everywhere; I was constantly sounding the depth of her 
still gaze as she took the books I gave her, whispered the poetry I taught her, 
and played with a light but confident touch her own strange, coherent songs on 
the piano. She could fall for hours into the pictures in a book and listen to me 
read until she sat so still the sight of her jarred me, made me put the book 
down, and just stare back at her across the lighted room; then she'd move, a 
doll coming to life, and say in the softest voice that I must read some more.
 "And then strange things began to happen, for though she said little and was 
the chubby, round-fingered child 
still, I'd find her tucked in the arm of my chair reading the work of Aristotle 
or Boethius or a new novel just come 
over the Atlantic. Or pecking out the music of Mozart .we'd only heard the night 
before with an infallible ear and a 
concentration that made her ghostly as she sat there hour after hour discovering 
the music the melody, then the 
bass, and finally bringing it together. Claudia was mystery. It was not possible 
to know what she knew or did not
know. And to watch her kill was chilling. She would sit alone in the dark square 
waiting for the kindly gentleman 
or woman to find her, her eyes more mindless than I had ever seen Lestat's. Like 
a child numbed with fright she 
would whisper her plea for help to her gentle, admiring patrons, and as they 
carried her out of the square, her 
arms would fix about their necks, her tongue between her teeth, her vision 
glazed with consuming hunger. They 
found death fast in those first years, before she learned to play with them, to 
lead them to the doll shop or the 
cafe where they gave her steaming cups of chocolate or tea to ruddy her pale 
cheeks, cups she pushed away, 
waiting, waiting, as if feasting silently on their terrible kindness.
"But when that was done, she was my companion, my pupil, her long hours spent 
with me consuming faster and faster the knowledge I gave her, sharing with me 
some quiet understanding which could not include Lestat. At dawn she lay with 
me, her heart beating against my heart, and many times when I looked at her-when 
she was at her music or painting and didn't know I stood in the room-I thought 
of that singular experience rd had with her and no other, that I had killed her, 
taken her life from her, had drunk all of her life's blood in that fatal embrace 
I'd lavished on so many others, others who lay now moldering in the damp earth. 
But she lived, she lived to put her arms around my neck and press her tiny 
cupid's bow to my lips and put her gleaming eye to nay eye until our lashes 
touched and, laughing, we reeled about the room as if to the wildest waltz. 
Father and Daughter. Lover and Lover. You can imagine how well it was Lestat did 
not envy us this, but only smiled on it from afar, waiting until she came to 
him. Then he would take her out into the street and they would wave to me 
beneath the window, off to share what they shared: the hunt, the seduction, the 
kill.
"Years passed in this way. Years and years and years. Yet it wasn't until some 
time had passed that an obvious fact occurred to me about Claudia. I suppose 
from the expression on your face you've already guessed, and you wonder why I 
didn't guess. I can only tell you, time is not the same for me, nor was it for 
us then. Day did not link to day making a taut and jerking chain; rather, the 
moon rose over lapping waves."
"Her body!" the boy said. "She was never to grow up."
The vampire nodded. "She was to be the demon child forever," he said, his voice 
soft as if he wondered at it. "Just as I am the young man I was when I died. And 
Lestat? The same. But her mind It was a vampire's mind. And I strained to know 
how she moved towards womanhood. She came to talk more, though she was never 
other than a reflective person and could listen to me patiently by the hour 
without interruption. Yet more and more her doll-like face seemed to possess two 
totally aware adult eyes, and innocence seemed lost somewhere with 
neglected-toys and the loss of a certain patience. There was something 
dreadfully sensual about her lounging on the settee in a tiny nightgown of lace 
and stitched pearls; she became an eerie and powerful seductress, her voice as 
clear and sweet as ever, though it had a resonance which was womanish, a 
sharpness sometimes that proved shocking; After days of her usual quiet, she 
would scoff suddenly at Lestat's predictions about the war; or drinking blood 
from a crystal glass say that there were no books in the house, we must get more 
even if we had to steal them, and then coldly tell me of a library she'd heard 
of, in a palatial mansion in the Faubourg St.-Marie, a woman who collected books 
as if they were rocks or pressed butterflies. She asked if I might get her into 
the woman's bedroom.
"I was aghast at such moments; her mind was unpredictable, unknowable. But then 
she would sit on my lap and put her fingers in my hair and doze there against my 
heart, whispering to me softly I should never be as grown up as she until I knew 
that killing was the more serious thing, not the books, the music. `Always the 
music . . .' she whispered. `Doll, doll,' I called her. That's what she was. A 
magic doll. Laughter and infinite intellect and then the round-checked face, the 
bud mouth. `Let me dress you, let me brush your hair,' I would say to her out of 
old habit, aware of her smiling and watching me with the thin veil of boredom 
over her expression. `Do as you like,' she breathed into my ear as I bent down 
to fasten her pearl buttons. `Only kill with me tonight. You never let me see 
you kill, Louis!'
"She wanted a coffin of her own now, which left me more wounded than I would let 
her see. I walked out after giving my gentlemanly consent; for how many years 
had I slept with her as if she were part of me I couldn't know. But then I found 
her near the Ursuline Convent, an orphan lost in the darkness, and she ran 
suddenly towards me and clutched at me with a human desperation. `I don't want 
it if it hurts you,' she confided so softly that a human embracing us both could 
not have heard her or felt her breath. `I'll stay with you always. But I must 
see it, don't you understand? A coin for a child.'
"We were to go to the coffinmaker's. A play, a tragedy in one act: I to leave 
her in his little parlor and confide to him in the anteroom that she was to die. 
Talk of love, she must have the best, but she must not know; and the 
coffinmaker, shaken with the tragedy of it, must make it for her, picturing her 
laid there on the white satin, dabbing a tear from his eye despite all the years 
. . . .
" `But, why, Claudia . .' I pleaded with her. I loathed to do it, loathed cat 
and mouse with the help less human. But hopelessly her lover, I took her there 
and set her on the sofa, where she sat with folded hands in her lap, her tiny 
bonnet bent down, as if she didn't know what we whispered about her in the 
foyer. The undertaker was an old and greatly refined man of color who drew me 
swiftly aside lest `the baby' should hear. `But why must she die?' he begged me, 
as if I were God who ordained it. `Her heart, she cannot live,' I said, the 
words taking on for me a peculiar power, a disturbing resonance. The emotion in 
his narrow, heavily lined face disturbed me; something came to my mind, a 
quality of light, a gesture, the sound of something . a child crying in a 
stenchfilled room. Now he unlocked one after another of his long rooms and 
showed me the coffins, black lacquer and silver, she wanted that. And suddenly I 
found myself backing away from him out of the coffin-house, hurriedly taking her 
hand. `The order's been taken,' I said to her. `It's driving me mad!' I breathed 
the fresh air of the street as though I'd been suffocated and then I saw her 
compassionless face studying mine. She slipped her small gloved hand back into 
my own. `I want it, Louis,' she explained patiently.
"And then one night she climbed the undertaker's stairs, Lestat beside her, for 
the con, and left the coffinmaker, unawares, dead across the dusty piles of 
papers on his desk. And there the coffin lay in our bedroom, where she watched 
it often by the hour when it was new, as if the thing were moving or alive or 
unfolded some mystery to her little by little, as things do which change. But 
she did not sleep in it. She slept with me.
"There were other changes in her. I cannot date them or put them in order. She 
did not kill indiscriminately. She fell into demanding patterns. Poverty began 
to fascinate her; she begged Lestat or me to take a carriage out through the 
Faubourg St.-Marie to the riverfront places where the immigrants lived. She 
seemed obsessed with the women and children. These things Lestat told me with 
great amusement, for I was loath to go and would sometimes not be persuaded 
under any circumstance. But Claudia had a family there which she took one by 
one. And she had asked to enter the cemetery of the suburb city of Lafayette and 
there roam the high marble tombs in search of those desperate men who, having no 
place else to sleep, spend what little they have on a bottle of wine, and crawl 
into a rotting vault. Lestat was impressed, overcome. What a picture he made of 
her, the infant death, he called her. Sister death, and sweet death; and for me, 
mockingly, he had the term with a sweeping bow, Merciful Death! which he said 
like a woman clapping her hands and shouting out a word of exciting gossip: oh, 
merciful heavens! so that I wanted to strangle him.
"But there was no quarrelling. We kept to ourselves. We had our adjustments. 
Books filled our long fiat from floor to ceiling in row after row of gleaming 
leather volumes, as Claudia and I pursued our natural tastes and Lestat went 
about his lavish acquisitions. Until she began to ask questions."
The vampire stopped. And the boy looked as anxious as before, as if patience 
took the greatest effort. But the vampire had brought his long, white fingers 
together as if to make a church steeple and then folded them and pressed his 
palms tight. It was as if he'd forgotten the boy altogether. "I should have 
known," he said, "that it was inevitable, and I should have seen the signs of it 
coming. For I was so attuned to her; I loved her so completely; she was so much 
the companion of my every waking hour, the only companion that I had, other than 
death. I should have known. But something in me was conscious of an enormous 
gulf of darkness very close to us, as though we walked always near a sheer cliff 
and might see it suddenly but too late if we made the wrong turn or became too 
lost in our thoughts. Sometimes the physical world about me seemed insubstantial 
except for that darkness. As if a fault in the earth were about to open and I 
could see the great crack breaking down the Rue Royale, and all the buildings 
were falling to dust in the rumble. But worst of all, they were transparent, 
gossamer, like stage drops made of silk. Ah . . . I'm distracted. What do I say? 
That I ignored the signs in her, that I clung desperately to the happiness she'd 
given me. And still gave me; and ignored all else.
 "But these were the signs. She grew cold to Lestat. She fell to staring at him 
for hours. When he spoke, often 
she  't answer him, and one could hardly tell if it was contempt or that she 
didn't hear. .And our fragile domestic 
tranquility erupted with his outrage. He did not have to be loved, but he would 
not be ignored; and once he even 
dew at her, shouting that he would slap her, and I found myself in the wretched 
position of fighting him as I'd 
done years before she'd come to us. `She's not a child any longer,' I whispered 
to him. `I don't know what it is. 
She's a woman.' I urged him to take it lightly, and he affected disdain and 
ignored her in turn. But one evening he 
came in flustered and told me she'd followed him though she'd refused to go with 
him to kill, she'd followed him 
afterwards. `What's the matter with her!' he flared at me, as though rd given 
birth to her and must know.
"And then one night our servants vanished. Two of the best maids we'd ever 
retained, a mother and daughter. The coachman was sent to their house only to 
report they'd disappeared, and then the father was at our door, pounding the 
knocker. He stood back on the brick sidewalk regarding me with that grave 
suspicion that sooner or later crept into the faces of all mortals who-knew us 
for any length of time, the forerunner of death, as pallor might be to a fatal 
fever; and I tried to explain to him they had not been here, mother or daughter, 
and we must begin some search.
" `It's she!' Lestat hissed from the shadows when I shut the gate. `She's done 
something to them and brought risk for us all. I'll make her tell me!' And he 
pounded up the spiral stairs from the courtyard. I knew that she'd gone, slipped 
out while I was at the gate, and I knew something else also: that a vague stench 
came across the courtyard from the shut, unused kitchen, a stench that mingled 
uneasily with the honeysuckle-the stench of graveyards. I heard Lestat coming 
down as I approached the warped shutters, locked with rust to the small brick 
building. No food was ever prepared there, no work ever done, so that it lay 
like an old brick vault under the tangles of honeysuckle. The shutters came 
loose, the nails having turned to dust, and I heard Lestat's gasp as we stepped 
into the reeking dark. There they lay on the bricks, mother and daughter 
together, the arm of the mother fastened around the waist of the daughter, the 
daughter's head bent against the mother's breast, both foul with feces and 
swarming with ' . A great cloud of gnats rose as the shutter fell back, and I 
waved them away from me in a convulsive disgust. Ants crawled undisturbed over 
the eyelids, the mouths of the dead pair, and in the moonlight I could see the 
endless map of silvery paths of snails. `Damn her!' Lestat burst out, and I 
grabbed his arm and held him fast, pitting all my strength against him. `What do 
you mean to do with her)' I insisted. `What can you do? She's not a child 
anymore that will do what we say simply because we say it. We must teach her.'
" `She knows!' He stood back from me brushing his coat. `She knows! She's known 
for years what to dot What can be risked and what cannot. I won't have her do 
this without my permission) I won't tolerate it.'
" `Then, are you master off us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed 
to imbibe it from my quiet subservience? I don't think so. She sees herself as 
equal to us now, and us as equal to each other. I tell you we must reason with 
her, instruct her to respect what is ours. As all of us should respect it.'
"He stalked off, obviously absorbed in what rd said, though he would give no 
admission of it to me. And he took his vengeance to the city. Yet when he came 
home, fatigued and satiated, she was still not there. He sat against the velvet 
arm of the couch and stretched his long legs out on the length of it. `Did you 
bury them?' he asked me.
" `They're gone,' I said. I did not care to say even to myself that I had burned 
their remains in the old unused kitchen stove. `But there is the father to deal 
with, and the brother,' I said to him. I feared his temper. I wished at once to 
plan some way to quickly dispose of the whole problem. But he said now that the 
father and the brother were no more, that death had come to dinner in their 
small house near the ramparts and stayed to say grace when everyone was done. 
`Wine,' he whispered now, running his finger on his lip. `Both of them had drunk 
too much wine. I found myself tapping the fence posts with a stick to make a 
tune,' he laughed. `But I don't like it, the dizziness. Do you like it?' And 
when he looked at me I had to smile at him because the wine was working in him 
and he was mellow; and in that moment when his face looked warm and reasonable, 
I leaned over and said, `I hear Claudia's tap on the stairs. Be gentle with her. 
It's all done.'
"She came in then, with her bonnet ribbons undone and her little boots caked 
with dirt. I watched them tensely, Lestat with a sneer on his lips, she as 
unconscious of him as if he weren't there. She had a bouquet of white 
chrysanthemums in her arms, such a large bouquet it made her all the more a 
small child. Her bonnet fell back now, hung on her shoulder for an instant, and 
then fell to the carpet. And all through her golden hair I saw the narrow petals 
of the chrysanthemums. 'Tomorrow is the Feast of All Saints,' she said. `Do you 
know?'
" `Yes,' I said to her. It is the day in New Orleans when all the faithful go to 
the cemeteries to care for the graves of their loved ones. They whitewash the 
plaster walls of the vaults, clean the names cut into the marble slabs. And 
finally they deck the tombs with flowers. In the St. Louis Cemetery, which was 
very near our house, in which all the great Louisiana families were buried, in 
which my own brother was buried, there were even little iron benches set before 
the graves where the families might sit to receive the other families who had 
come to the cemetery for the same purpose. It was a festival in New Orleans; a 
celebration of death, it might have seemed to tourists who didn't understand it, 
but it was a celebration of the life after. `I bought this from one of the 
vendors,' Claudia said. Her voice was soft and inscrutable. Her eyes opaque and 
without emotion.
" 'For the two you left in the kitchen!' Lestat said fiercely. She turned to him 
for the first time, but she said nothing. She stood there staring at him as if 
she'd never seen him before. And then she took several steps towards him and 
looked at him, still as if she were positively examining him. I moved forward. I 
could feel his anger. Her coldness. And now she turned to me. And then, looking 
from one to the other of us, she asked:
" `Which of you did it? Which of you made me what I am?'
"I could not have been more astonished at anything she might have said or done. 
And yet it was inevitable that her long silence would thus be broken. She seemed 
very little concerned with me, though. Her eyes fixed on Lestat. `You speak of 
us as if we always existed as we are now,' she said, her voice soft, measured, 
the child's tone rounded with the woman's seriousness. `You speak of them out 
there as mortals, us as vampires. But it was not always so. Louis had a mortal 
sister, I remember her. And there is a picture of her in his trunk. I've seen 
him look at it! He was mortal the same as she; and so was I. Why else this size, 
this shape?' She opened her arms now and let the chrysanthemums fall to the 
floor. I whispered her name. I think I meant to distract her. It was impossible. 
The tide had turned. Lestat's eyes burned with a keen fascination, a malignant 
pleasure:
" `You made us what we are, didn't you?' she accused him.
"He raised his eyebrows now in mock amazement. `What you are?' he asked. `And 
would you be something other than what you are!' He drew up his knees and leaned 
forward, his eyes narrow. `Do you know how long it's been? Can you picture 
yourself? Must I find a hag to show you your mortal countenance now if I had let 
you alone?'
"She turned away from him, stood for a moment as if she had no idea what she 
would do, and then she moved towards the chair beside the fireplace and, 
climbing on it, curled up like the most helpless child. She brought her knees up 
close to her, her velvet coat open, her silk dress tight around her knees, and 
she stared at the ashes in the hearth. But there was nothing helpless about her 
stare. Her eyes had independent life, as if the body were possessed.
" 'You could be dead by now if you were mortal!' Lestat insisted to her, pricked 
by her silence. He drew his legs around and set his boots on the floor. `Do you 
hear me? Why do you ask me this now? Why do you make such a thing of it? You've 
known all your life you're a vampire.' And so he went on in a tirade, saying 
much the same things he'd said to me many times over: know your nature, kill, be 
what you are. But all of this seemed strangely beside the point. For Claudia had 
no qualms about killing. She sat back now and let her head roll slowly to where 
she could see him across from her. She was studying him again, as if he were a 
puppet on strings. `Did you do it to me? And how?' she asked, her eyes 
narrowing. `How did you do it?'
" `And why should I tell you? It's my power.'
" `Why yours alone?' she asked, her voice icy, her eyes heartless. `How was it 
done?' she demanded suddenly in rage.
"It was electric. He rose from the couch, and I was on my feet immediately, 
facing him. `Stop here' he said to me. He wrung his hands. 'Do something about 
her! I can't endure her?' And then he started for the door, but turned and, 
coming back, drew very close so that he towered over Claudia, putting- her in a 
deep shadow. She glared up at him fearlessly, her eyes moving back and forth 
over his face with total detachment. `I can undo what I did. Both to you and to 
him,' he said to her, his finger pointing at me across the room. `Be glad I made 
you what you are,' he sneered. `Or I'll break you in a thousand pieces!"'
"Well, the peace of the house was destroyed, though there was quiet. Days passed 
and she asked no questions, though now she was deep into books of the occult, of 
witches and witchcraft, and of vampires. This was mostly fancy, you understand. 
Myth, tales, sometimes mere romantic horror tales. But she read it all. Till 
dawn she read, so that I had to go and collect her and bring her to bed.
"Lestat, meantime, hired a butler and maid and had a team of workers in to make 
a great fountain in the courtyard with a stone nymph pouring water eternal from 
a widemouthed shell. He had goldfish brought and boxes of rooted water lilies 
set into the fountain so their blossoms rested upon the surface and shivered in 
the ever-moving water.
"A woman had seen him kill on the Nyades Road, which ran to the town of 
Carrolton, and there were stories of it in the papers, associating him with a 
haunted house near Nyades and Melpomene, all of which delighted him. He was the 
Nyades Road ghost for some time, though it finally fell to the back pages; and 
then he performed another grisly murder in another public place and set the 
imagination of New Orleans to working. But all this had about it some quality of 
fear. He was pensive, suspicious, drew close to me constantly to ask where 
Claudia was, where she'd gone, and what she was doing.
" `She'll be all right,' I assured him, though I was estranged from her and in 
agony, as if she'd been my bride. She hardly saw me now, as she'd not seen 
Lestat before, and she might walk away while I spoke to her.
" `She had better be all right!" he said nastily.
" `And what will you do if she's not?' I asked, more in fear than accusation.
"He looked up at me, with his cold gray eyes. `You take care of her, Louis. You 
talk to her!' he said. `Everything was perfect, and now this. There's no need 
for it'
"But it was my choice to let her come to me, and she did. It was early one 
evening when I'd just awakened. The house was dark. I saw her standing by the 
French windows; she wore puffed sleeves and a pink sash, and was watching with 
lowered lashes the evening rush in the Rue Royale. I could hear Lestat in his 
room, the sound of water splashing from his pitcher. The faint smell of his 
cologne came and went like the sound of music from the cafe two doors down from 
us. `He'll tell me nothing,' she said softly. I hadn't realized she knew that I 
had opened my eyes. I came towards her and knelt beside her. `You'll tell me, 
won't you? How it was done.'
" 'Is this what you truly want to know?' I asked, searching her face. `Or is it 
why it was done to you . . . and what you were before? I don't understand what 
you mean by "how," for if you mean how was it done so that you in turn may do 
it. . .
" `I don't even know what it is. What you're saying,' she said with a touch of 
coldness. Then she turned full around and put her hands on my face. `Kill with 
me tonight,' she whispered as sensuously as a lover. `And tell me all that you 
know. What are we? Why are we not like them?' She looked down into the street.
" `I don't know the answers to your questions,' I said to her. Her face 
contorted suddenly, as if she were straining to hear me over a sudden noise. And 
then she shook her head. But I went on. `I wonder the same things you wonder. I 
do not know. How I was made, I'll tell you that . . . that Lestat did it to me. 
But the real "how" of it, I don't know!' Her face had that same look of strain. 
I was seeing in it the first traces of fear, or something worse and deeper than 
fear. 'Claudia,' I said to her, putting my hands over her hands and pressing 
them gently against my skin. `Lestat has one wise thing to tell you. Don't ask 
these questions. You've been my companion for countless years in my search for 
all that I could learn of mortal life and mortal creation. Don't be my companion 
now in this anxiety. He can't give us the answers. And I have none.'
"I could see she could not accept this, but I hadn't expected the convulsive 
turning away, the violence with which she tore at her own hair for an instant 
and then stopped as if the gesture were useless, stupid. It filled me with 
apprehension. She was looking at the sky. It was smoky, starless, the clouds 
blowing fast from the direction of the river. She made a sudden movement of her 
lips as if she'd bitten into them, then she turned to me and, still whispering, 
she said, `Then he made me . . . he did it . . . you did not!' There was 
something so dreadful about her expression, I'd left her before I meant to do 
it. I was standing before the fireplace lighting a single candle in front of the 
tall mirror. And there suddenly, I saw something which startled me, gathering 
out of the gloom first as a hideous mask, then becoming its three-dimensional 
reality: a weathered skull. I stared at it. It smelled faintly of the earth 
still, but had been scrubbed. `Why don't you answer me?' she was asking. I heard 
Lestat's door open. He would go out to kill at once, at least to fund the kill. 
I would not.
"I would let the first hours of the evening accumulate in quiet, as hunger 
accumulated in me, till the drive grew almost too strong, so that I might give 
myself to it all the more completely, blindly. I heard her question again 
clearly, as though it had been floating in the air like the reverberation of a 
bell . . . and felt my heart pounding. `He did make me, of course! He said so 
himself. But you hide something from me. Something he hints at when I question 
him. He says that it could not have been done without you!'
"I found myself staring at the skull, yet hearing her as if the words were 
lashing me, lashing me to make me tam around and face the lash. The thought went 
through me more like a flash of cold than a thought, that nothing should remain 
of me now but such a skull. I turned around and saw in the light from the street 
her eyes, like two dark flames in her white face. A doll from whom someone had 
cruelly ripped the eyes and replaced them with a demonic fire. I found myself 
moving towards her, whispering her name, some thought forming on my lips, then 
dying, coming towards her, then away from her, fussing for her coat and her hat. 
I saw a tiny glove on the door which was phosphorescent in the shadows, and for 
just a moment I thought it a tiny, severed hand.
" `What's the matter with you . . .?' She drew nearer, looking up into my face. 
`What has always been the matter? Why do you stare at the skull like that, at 
the glover She asked this gently, but . . . not gently enough.
"There was a slight calculation in her voice, an unreachable detachment.
" 'I need you,' I said to her, without wanting to say it. `I cannot bear to lose 
you. You're the only companion I have in immortality.'
" 'But surely there must be others! Surely we are not the only vampires on 
earths' I heard her saying it as I had said it, heard my own words coming back 
to me now on the tide of her self-awareness, her searching. But there's no pain, 
I thought suddenly. There's urgency, heartless urgency. I looked down at her. 
`Aren't you the same as I?' She looked at me. `You've taught me all I know!'
" `Lestat taught you to kill.' I fetched the glove. `here, come . . . let's go 
out. I want to go out. . .
I was stammering, trying to force the gloves on her. I lifted the great curly 
mass of her hair and placed it gently over her coat. `But you taught me to see!' 
she said. `You taught me the words vampire eyes,' she said. `You taught me to 
drink the world, to hunger for more than . . '
" `I never meant those words that way, vampire eyes,' I said to her. `It has a 
different ring when you say it . . . .' She was tugging at me, trying to make me 
look at her. `Come,' I said to her, `I've something to show you . . . .' And 
quickly I led her down the passage and down the spiral stairs through the dark 
courtyard. But I no more knew what I had to show her, really, than I knew where 
I was going. Only that I had to move toward it with a sublime and doomed 
instinct.
"We rushed through the early evening city, the sky overhead a pale violet now 
that the clouds were gone, the stars small and faint, the air around us sultry 
and fragrant even as we moved away from the spacious gardens, towards those mean 
and narrow streets where the flowers erupt in the cracks of the stones, and the 
huge oleander shoots out thick, waxen stems of white and pink blooms, like a 
monstrous weed in the empty lots. I heard the staccato of Claudia's steps as she 
rushed beside me, never once asking me to slacken my pace; and she stood 
finally, her face infinitely patient, looking up at me in a dark and narrow 
sheet where a few old slope-roofed French houses remained among the Spanish 
facades, ancient little houses, the plaster blistered from the moldering brick 
beneath. I had found the house now by a blind effort, aware that I had always 
known where it was and avoided it, always turned before this dark lampless 
corner, not wishing to pass the low window where I'd first heard Claudia cry. 
The house was standing still. Sunk lower than it was in those days, the alley 
way crisscrossed with sagging cords of laundry, the weeds high along the low 
foundation, the two dormer windows broken and patched with cloth. I touched the 
shutters. `It was here I first saw you,' I said to her, thinking to tell it to 
her so she would understand, yet feeling now the chill of her gaze, the distance 
of her stare. `I heard you crying. You were there in a room with your mother. 
And -your mother was dead. Dead for days, and you didn't know. You clung to her, 
whining . crying pitifully, your body white and feverish and hungry. You were 
trying to wake her from the dead, you were hugging her for warmth, for fear. It 
was almost morning and . . '
"I put my hand to my temples. `I opened the shutters . . I came into the room. I 
felt pity for you. Pity. But. . . something else.'
"I saw her lips slack, her eyes wide. `You . . . fed on me?' she whispered. `I 
was your victim!'
" `Yes!' I said to her. `I did it.'
"There was a moment so elastic and painful as to be unbearable. She stood 
stark-still in the shadows, her huge eyes gathering the light, the warm air 
rising suddenly with a soft noise. And then she turned. I heard the clicking of 
her slippers as she ran. And ran. And ran. I stood frozen, hearing the sound 
grow smaller and smaller; and then I turned,, the fear in me unraveling, growing 
huge and insurmountable, and I ran after her. It was unthinkable that I not 
catch her, that I not overtake her at once and tell her that I loved her, must 
have her, must keep her, and every second that I ran headlong down the dark 
street after her was like her slipping away from me drop by drop; my heart was 
pounding, unfed, pounding and rebelling against the strain. Until I came 
suddenly to a dead stop, She stood beneath a lamppost, staring mutely, as if she 
didn't know me. I took her small waist in both hand; and lifted her into the 
light. She studied me, her face contorted, her head turning as if she wouldn't 
give me her direct glance, as if she must deflect an overpowering feeling of 
revulsion. `You killed me,' she whispered `You took my life!'
" 'Yes,' I said to her, holding her so that I cook feel her heart pounding. 
`Rather, I tried to take it. To drink it away. But you had a heart like no other 
hear I've ever felt, a heart that beat and beat until I had to let you go, had 
to cast you away from me lest you quickened my pulse till I would die. And it 
was Lestat who found me out; Louis the sentimentalist, the fool feasting on a 
golden-haired child, a Holy Innocent a little girl. He brought you back from the 
hospital where they'd put you, and I never knew what he mean to do except teach 
me my nature. "Take her, finish it," he said. And I felt that passion for you 
again (r)h, I know I've lost you now forever. I can see it ix your eyes! You 
look at me as you look at mortals from aloft, from some region of cold 
self-sufficiency l can't understand. But I did it. I felt it for you again, vile 
unsupportable hunger for your hammering heart this cheek, this skin. You were 
pink and fragrant a! mortal children are, sweet with the bite of salt and dust, 
I held you again, I took you again. And when I though your heart would kill me 
and I didn't care, he parted us and, gashing his own wrist, gave it to you to 
drink. And drink you did. And drink and drink until you nearly drained him and 
he was reeling. But you were a vampire then. And that very night you drank a 
human's blood and have every night thereafter.'
"Her face had not changed. The flesh was like the wax of ivory candles; only the 
eyes showed life. There was nothing more to say to her. I set her down. `I took 
your life,' I said. `He gave it back to you.'
" `And here it is,' she said under her breath. `And I hate you both!"'
The vampire stopped.
"But why did you tell her?" asked the boy after a respectful pause.
"How could I not tell her?" The vampire looked up in mild astonishment. "She had 
to know it. She had to weigh one thing against the other. It was not as if 
Lestat had taken her full from life as he had taken me; I had stricken her. She 
would have died! There would have been no mortal life for her. But what's the 
difference? For all of us it's a matter of years, dying! So what she saw more 
graphically then was what all men knew: that death will come inevitably, unless 
one chooses . . . this!" He opened his white hands now and looked at the palms.
"And did you lose her? Did she go?"
"Go! Where would she have gone? She was a child no bigger than that. Who would 
have sheltered her? Would she have found some vault, like a mythical vampire, 
lying down with worms and ants by day and rising to haunt some small cemetery 
and its surroundings? But that's not why she didn't go. Something in her was as 
akin to me as anything in her could have been. That thing in Lestat was the 
same. We could not bear to live alone! We needed our little company! A 
wilderness of mortals surrounded us, groping, blind, preoccupied, and the brides 
and bridegrooms of death.
" `Locked together in hatred,' she said to me calmly afterwards. I found her by 
the empty hearth, picking the small blossoms from a long stem of lavender. I was 
so relieved to see her there that I would have done anything, said anything. And 
when I heard her ask me in a low voice if I would tell her all I knew, I did 
this gladly. For all the rest was nothing compared to that old secret, that I 
had claimed her life. I told her of myself as I've told you, of how Lestat came 
to me and what went on the night he carried her from the little hospital. She 
asked no questions and only occasionally looked up from her flowers. An then, 
when it was finished and I was sitting there, staring again at that wretched 
skull and listening to the soft slithering of the petals of the flowers on her 
dress and feeling a dull misery in my limbs and mind, she said to me, `I don't 
despise you!' I wakened. She slipped off the high, rounded damask cushion an 
came towards me, covered with the scent of flower. the petals in her hand. `Is 
this the aroma of mortal child?' she whispered. `Louis. Lover.' I remember 
holding her and burying my head in her small chest, crushing her bird-shoulders, 
her small hands working into my hair, soothing me, holding me. `I was mortal b 
you,' she said, and when I lifted my eyes I saw he smiling; but the softness on 
her lips was evanescent and in a moment she was looking past me like some one 
listening for faint, important music. `You gave m your immortal kiss,' she said, 
though not to me, but to herself. `You loved me with your vampire nature.'
" `I love you now with my human nature, if ever had it,' I said to her.
" `Ah yes . . .' she answered, still musing. `Yes, and that's your flaw, and why 
your face was miserable when I said as humans say, "I hate you," and why you 
look at me as you do now. Human nature. I have no human nature. And no short 
story of a mother' corpse and hotel rooms where children learn monstrosity can 
give me one. I have none. Your eyes grow cold with fear when I say this to you. 
Yet I have you tongue. Your passion for the truth. Your need to drive the needle 
of the mind right to the heart of it all like the beak of the hummingbird, who 
beats so wild and fast that mortals might think he had no tiny feet could never 
set, just go from quest to quest, going again and again for the heart of it. I 
am your vampire self more than you are. And now the sleep of sixty five years 
has ended'
"The sleep of sixty-five years hers ended! I heard he! say it, disbelieving, not 
wanting to believe she knee and meant precisely what she'd said. For it had 
beer. exactly that since the night I tried to leave Lestat and failed and, 
falling in love with her, forgot my teeming brain, my awful questions. And now 
she had the awful questions on her lips and must know. She'd strolled slowly to 
the center of the room and strewn the crumpled lavender all around her. She 
broke the brittle stem and touched it to her lips. And having heard the whole 
story said, `He made me then . . . to be your companion. No chains could have 
held you in your loneliness, and he could give you nothing. He gives me nothing 
.... I used to think him charming. I liked the way he walked, the way he tapped 
the flagstones with his walking stick and swung me in his arms. And the abandon 
with which he killed, which was as I felt. But I no longer find him charming. 
And you never have. And we've been his puppets, you and I; you remaining to take 
care of him, and I your saving companion. Now's time to end it, Louis. Now's 
time to leave him.'
"Time to leave him.
"I hadn't thought of it, dreamed of it in so long; I'd grown accustomed to him, 
as if he were a condition of life itself. I could hear a vague mingling of 
sounds now, which meant he had entered the carriage way, that he would soon be 
on the back stairs. And I thought of what I always felt when I heard him coming, 
a vague anxiety, a vague need. And then the thought of being free of him forever 
rushed over me like water I'd forgotten, waves and waves of cool water. I was 
standing now, whispering to her that he was coming.
" `I know,' she smiled. `I heard him when he turned the far corner.'
" `But he'll never let us leave,' I whispered, though I'd caught the implication 
of her words; her vampire sense was keen. She stood en garde magnificently. `But 
you don't know him if you think he'll let us leave,' I said to her, alarmed at 
her self-confidence. `He will not let us go.'
"And she, still smiling, said, `Oh . . . really?"'
"It was agreed then to make plans. At once. The following night my agent came 
with his usual complaints about doing business by the light of one wretched 
candle and took my explicit orders for an ocean crossing. Claudia and I would go 
to Europe, on the first available ship, regardless of what port we had to settle 
for. And paramount was that an important chest be shipped with us, a chest which 
might have to be fetched carefully from our house during the day and put on 
board, not in the freight but in our cabin. And then there were arrangements for 
Lestat. I had planned to leave him the rents for several shops and town houses 
and a small construction company operating in the Faubourg Marigny. I put my 
signature to these things readily. I wanted to buy our freedom: to convince 
Lestat we wanted only to take a. trip together and that he could remain in the 
style to which he was accustomed; he would have his own money and need come to 
me for nothing. For all these years, rd kept ` dependent on me. Of course, he 
demanded his funds from me as if I were merely his banker, and thanked me with 
the most acrimonious words at his command; but he loathed his dependence. I 
hoped to deflect his suspicion by playing to his greed. And, convinced that he 
could read any emotion in my face, I was more than fearful. I did not believe it 
would be possible to escape him. Do you understand what that means? .I acted as 
though I believed it, but I did not.
"Claudia, meantime, was flirting with disaster, her equanimity overwhelming to 
me as she read her vampire books and asked Lestat questions. She remained 
undisturbed by his caustic outbursts, sometimes asking the same question over 
and over again in different ways and carefully considering what little 
information he might let escape in spite of himself. `What vampire made you what 
you are?' she asked, without looking up from her book and keeping her lids 
lowered under his onslaught. `Why do you never talk about him? she went on, as 
if his fierce objections were thin air. She seemed immune to his irritation.
" 'You're greedy, both of you!' he said the next night as he paced back and 
forth in the dark of the center of the room, turning a vengeful eye on Claudia, 
who was fitted into her corner, in the circle of her candle flame, her books in 
stacks about her. `Immortality is not enough for you! No, you would look the 
Gift Horse of God in the mouth! I could offer it to any man out there in the 
street and he would jump for it..."
" `Did you jump for it?' she asked softly, her lips barely moving . . . . but 
you, you would know the reason for it. Do you want to end it? I can give you 
death more easily than I gave you life!' He turned to me, her fragile flame 
throwing his shadow across me. It made a halo around his blond hair and left his 
face, except for the gleaming cheekbone, dark. `Do you want death'
" `Consciousness is not death,' she whispered.
" `Answer me' Do you want death!'
" `And you give all these things. They proceed from you. Life and death,' she 
whispered, mocking him.
" `I have,' he said. `I do.'
" `You know nothing,' she said to him gravely, her voice so low that the 
slightest noise from the street interrupted it, might carry her words away, so 
that I found myself straining to hear her against myself as I lay with my head 
back against the chair. `And suppose the vampire who made you knew nothing, and 
the vampire who made that vampire knew nothing, and the vampire before him knew 
nothing, and so it goes back and back, nothing proceeding from nothing, until 
there is nothing! And we must live with the knowledge that there is no 
knowledge.'
" `Yes!' he cried out suddenly, his hands out, his voice tinged with something 
other than anger.
"He was silent. She was silent. He turned, slowly, as if I'd made some movement 
which alerted him, as if I were rising behind him. It reminded me of the way 
humans tam when they feel my breath against them and know suddenly that where 
they thought themselves to be utterly alone . . . that moment of awful suspicion 
before they see my face and gasp. He was looking at me now, and I could barely 
see his lips moving. And then I sensed it. He was afraid. Lestat afraid.
"And she was staring at him with the same level gaze, evincing no emotion, no 
thought.
" `You infected her with this . . .' he whispered.
"He struck a match now with a sharp crackle and lit the mantel candles, lifted 
the smoky shades of the lamps, went around the room making light, until 
Claudia's small flame took on a solidity and he stood with his back to the 
marble mantel looking from light to light as if they restored some peace. 'I'm 
going out,' he said.
"She rose the instant he had reached the street, and suddenly she stopped in the 
center of the room and stretched, her tiny back arched, her arms straight up 
into small fists, her eyes squeezed shut for a moment and then wide open as if 
she were waking to the room from a dream. There was something obscene about her 
gesture; the room seemed to shimmer with Lestat's fear, echo with his last 
response. It demanded her attention. I must have made some involuntary movement 
to turn away from her, because she was standing at the arm of my chair now and 
pressing her hand fiat upon my book, a book I hadn't been reading for hours. 
'Come out with me.'
" `You were right. He knows nothing. There is nothing he can tell us,' I said to 
her.
"'Did you ever really  that he did?' she asked me in the same small voice. 
`We'll find others of our kind,' she said. `We'll find them in central Europe. 
That is where they live in such numbers that the stories, both fiction and fact, 
fill volumes. I'm convinced it was from there that all vampires came, if they 
came from any place at all. We've tarried too long with him. Come out. Let the 
flesh instruct the mind'
"I think I felt a tremor of delight when she said these words, Let the flesh 
instruct the mind. 'Put books aside and kill,' she was whispering to me. I 
followed her down the stairs, across the courtyard and down a narrow alley to 
another street. Then she turned with outstretched arms for me to pick her up and 
carry her, though, of course, she was not tired; she wanted only to be rear my 
ear, to clutch my neck. 'I haven't told him my plan, about the voyage, the 
money,' I was saying to her, conscious of something about her that was beyond me 
as she rode my measured steps, weightless in my arms.
"'He killed the other vampire,' she said.
" `No, why do you say this?' I asked her. But it wasn't the saying of it that 
disturbed me, stirred my soul as if it were a pool of water longing to be 
-still. I felt as if she were moving me slowly towards something, as if she were 
the pilot of our slow walk through the dark street. `Because I know it now,' she 
said with authority. `The vampire made a slave of him, and he would no more be a 
slave than I would be a slave, and so he killed- him. Killed him before he knew 
what he might know, and then in panic made a slave of you. And you've been his 
slave'
" `Never really . . ' I whispered to her. I felt the press of her cheek against 
my temple. She was cold and needed the kill. `Not a slave. Just some sort of 
mindless accomplice,' I confessed to her, confessed to myself. I could feel the 
fever for the kill rising in me, a knot of hunger in my insides, a throbbing in 
the temples, as if the veins were contracting and my body might become a map of 
tortured vessels.
"'No, slave,' she persisted in her grave monotone, as though thinking aloud, the 
words revelations, pieces of a puzzle. `And I shall free us both.'
"I stopped. Her hand pressed me, urged me on. We were walking down the long wide 
alley beside the cathedral, towards the lights of Jackson Square, the water 
rushing fast in the gutter down the center of the alley, silver in the 
moonlight. She said, 'I will kill him.'
"I stood still at the end of the alley. I felt her shift in my arm, move down as 
if she could accomplish being free of me without the awkward aid of my hands. I 
set her on the stone sidewalk. I said no to her, I shook my head. I had that 
feeling then which I described before, that the building around me--the Cabildo, 
the cathedral, the apartments along the square-all this was silk and illusion 
and would ripple suddenly in a horrific wind, and a chasm would open in the 
earth that was the reality. 'Claudia,' I gasped, turning away from her.
" `And why not kill him!' she said now, her voice rising, silvery and finally 
shrill. `I have no use for him] I can get nothing from him! And he causes me 
pain, which I will not abide!'
" `And if he had so little use for us!' I said to her. But the vehemence was 
false. Hopeless. She was at a distance from me now, small shoulders straight and 
determined, her pace rapid, like a little girl who, walking out on Sundays with 
her parents, wants to walk ahead and pretend she is all alone. `Claudia!' I 
called after her, catching up with her in a stride. I reached for the small 
waist and felt her stiffen as if she had become iron. 'Claudia, you cannot kill 
him!' I whispered. She moved backwards, skipping, clicking on the stones, and 
moved out into the open street. A cabriolet rolled past us with a sudden surge 
of laughter and the clatter of horses and wooden wheels. The street was suddenly 
silent. I reached out for her and moved forward over an immense space and found 
her standing at the gate of Jackson Square, hands gripping the wrought-iron 
bars. I drew down close to her. `I don't care what you feel, what you say, you 
cannot mean to kill him,' I said to her.
" `And why not? Do you think ham so strong!' she said, her eyes on the statue in 
the square, two immense pools of light.
" `He is stronger than you know! Stronger than you dream! How do you mean to 
kill him? You can't measure his skill. You don't know!' I pleaded with her but 
could see her utterly unmoved, like a child staring in fascination through the 
window of a toy shop. Her tongue moved suddenly between her teeth and touched 
her lower lip in a strange flicker that sent a mild shock through my body. I 
tasted blood. I felt something palpable and helpless in my hands. I wanted to 
kill. I could smell and hear humans on the paths of the square, moving about the 
market, along the levee. I was about to take her, making her look at me, shake 
her if I had to, to make her listen, when she turned to me with her great liquid 
eyes. `I love you, Louis,' she said.
`Then listen to me, Claudia, I beg you,' I whispered, holding her, pricked 
suddenly by a nearby collection of whispers, the slow, rising articulation of 
human speech over the mingled sounds of the night. `He'll destroy you if you try 
to kill him. There is no way you can do such a thing for sure. You don't know 
how. And pitting yourself against him you'll lose everything. Claudia, I can't 
bear this.'
"There was a barely perceptible smile on her lips. `No, Louis,' she whispered. 
`I can kill him. And I want to tell you something else now, a secret between you 
and me.'
"I shook my head but she pressed even closer to me, lowering her lids so that 
her rich lashes almost brushed the roundness of her cheeks. `The secret is, 
Louis, that I want to kill him. I will enjoy it!'
"I knelt beside her, speechless, her eyes studying me as they'd done so often in 
the past; and then she said, `I kill humans every night. I seduce them, draw 
them close to me, with an insatiable hunger, a constant never-ending search for 
something . . . something, I don't know what it is . . : She brought her fingers 
to her lips now and pressed her lips, her mouth partly open so I could see the 
gleam of her teeth. `And I care nothing about them-where they came from, where 
they would go-if I did not meet them on the way. But I dislike him! I want him 
dead and will have him dead. I shall enjoy it.'
" `But Claudia, he is not mortal. He's immortal. No illness can touch him. Age 
has no power over him. You threaten a life which might endure to the end of the 
world!'
" `Ah, yes, that's it, precisely!' she said with reverential awe. `A lifetime 
that might have endured for centuries. Such blood, such power. Do you think I'll 
possess his power and my own power when I take him''
"I was enraged now. I rose suddenly and turned away from her. I could hear the 
whispering of humans near me. They were whispering of the father and the 
daughter, of some frequent sight of loving devotion. I realized they were 
talking of us.
" `It's not necessary,' I said to her. `It goes beyond all need, all common 
sense, all . .
" `What' Humanity? He's a killer!' she hissed. `Lone predator!' She repeated his 
own term, mocking it. `Don't interfere with me or seek to know the time I choose 
to do it, nor try to come between us. .
She raised her hand now to hush me and caught mine in an iron grasp, her tiny 
fingers biting into my tight, tortured flesh. `If you do, you will bring me 
destruction by your interference. I can't be discouraged.'
"She was gone then in a flurry of bonnet ribbons and clicking slippers. I 
turned, paying no attention to where I went, wishing the city would swallow me, 
conscious now of the hunger rising to overtake reason. I was almost loath to put 
an end to it. I needed to let the lust, the excitement blot out all 
consciousness, and I thought of the kill over and over and over, walking slowly 
up this street and down the next, moving inexorably towards it, saying, It's a 
string which is pulling me through the labyrinth. I am not pulling the string. 
The string is pulling me . . . . And then I stood in the Rue Conti listening to 
a dull thundering, a familiar sound. It was the fencers above in the salon, 
advancing on the hollow wooden floor, forward, back again, scuttling, and the 
silver zinging of the foils. I stood back against the wall, where I could see 
them through the high naked windows, the young men dueling late into the night, 
left ,arm poised like the arm of a dancer, grace advancing towards death, grace 
thrusting for the heart, images of the young Freniere now driving the silver 
blade forward, now being pulled by it towards hell. Someone had come down the 
narrow wooden steps to the street-a young boy, a boy so young he had the smooth, 
plump cheeks of a child; his face was pink and flushed from the fencing, and 
beneath his smart gray coat and ruffled shirt there was the sweet smell of 
cologne and salt. I could feel his heat as he emerged from the dim light of the 
stairwell. He was laughing to himself, talking almost inaudibly to himself, his 
brown hair falling down over his eyes as he went along, shaking his head, the 
whispers rising, then falling off. And then he stopped short, his eyes on me. He 
stared, and his eyelids quivered and he laughed quickly, nervously. `Excuse me!' 
he said now in French. `You gave me a start!' And then, just as he moved to make 
a ceremonial bow and perhaps go around me, he stood still, and the shock spread 
over his flushed face. I could see the heart beating in the pink flesh of his 
cheeks, smell the sudden sweat of his young, taut body.
" `You saw-me in the lamplight,' I said to him. `And my face looked to you like 
the mask of death.'
"His lips parted and his teeth touched and involuntarily he nodded, his eyes 
dazed.
" `Pass by!' I said to him. `Fast!"
The vampire paused, then moved as if he meant to go on. But he stretched his 
long legs under the table and, leaning back, pressed his hands to his head as if 
exerting a great pressure on his temples.
The boy, who had drawn himself up into a crouched position, his hands hugging 
his arms, unwound slowly. He glanced at the tapes and then back at the vampire. 
"But you killed someone that night," he said.
"Every night," said the vampire.
"Why did you let him go then?" asked the boy.
"I don't know," said the vampire, but it did not have the tone of truly I don't 
know, but rather, let it be. "You look tired," said the vampire. "You look 
cold."
"It doesn't matter," said the boy quickly. "The room's a little cold; I don't 
care about that. You're not cold, are you?"
"No." The vampire smiled and then his shoulders moved with silent laughter.
A moment passed in which the vampire seemed to be thinking and the boy to be 
studying the vampire's face. The vampire's eyes moved to the boy's watch.
"She didn't succeed, did she?" the boy asked softly.
"What do you honestly think?" asked the vampire. He had settled back in his 
chair. He looked at the boy intently.
"That she was . . . as you said, destroyed," said the boy; and he seemed to feel 
the words, so that he swallowed after he'd said the word destroyed. "Was she?" 
he asked.
"Don't you think that she could do it?" asked the vampire.
"But he was so powerful. You said yourself you never knew what powers he had, 
what secrets he knew. How could she even be sure how to kill him? How did she 
try?"
The vampire looked at the boy for a long time, his expression unreadable to the 
boy, who found himself looking away, as though the vampire's eyes were burning 
lights. "Why don't you drink from that bottle in your pocket?" asked the 
vampire. "It will make you warm."
"Oh, that . .. : ' said the boy. "I was going to. I just. . : '
The vampire laughed. "You didn't think it was polite!" he said, and he suddenly 
slapped his thigh.
"That's true," the boy shrugged, smiling now; and he took the small flask out of 
his jacket pocket, unscrewed the gold cap, and took a sip. He held the bottle, 
now looking at the vampire.
"No," the vampire smiled and raised his hand to wave away the offer.
Then his face became serious again and, sitting back, he went on.
"Lestat had a musician friend in the Rue Dumaine. We had seen him at a recital 
in the home of a Madame LeClair, who lived there also, which was at that time an 
extremely fashionable street; and this Madame LeClair, with whom Lestat was also 
occasionally amusing himself, had found the musician a room in another mansion 
nearby, where Lestat visited him often. I told you he played with his victims, 
made friends with them, seduced them into trusting and liking him, even loving 
him, before he killed. So he apparently played with this young boy, though it 
had gone on longer than any other such friendship I had ever observed. The young 
boy wrote good music, and often Lestat brought fresh sheets of it home and 
played the songs on the square grand in our parlor. The boy had a great talent, 
but you could tell that this music would not sell, because it was too 
disturbing. Lestat gave him money and spent evening after evening with him, 
often taking him to restaurants the boy could have never afforded, and he bought 
him all the paper and pens which he needed for the writing of his music.
"As I said, it had gone on far longer than any such friendship Lestat had ever 
had. And I could not tell whether he had actually become fond of a mortal in 
spite of himself or was simply moving towards a particularly grand betrayal and 
cruelty. Several times he'd indicated to Claudia and me that he was headed out 
to kill the boy directly, but he had not. And, of course, I never asked him what 
he felt because it wasn't worth the great uproar my question would have 
produced. Lestat entranced with a mortal! He probably would have destroyed the 
parlor furniture in a rage.
"The next night-after that which I just described to you-he jarred me miserably 
by asking me to go with him to the boy's flat. He was positively friendly, in 
one of those moods when he wanted my companionship. Enjoyment could bring that 
out of him. Wanting to see a good play, the regular opera, the ballet. He always 
wanted me, along. I think I must have seen Macbeth with him fifteen times. We 
went to every Performance, even those by amateurs, and Lestat would stride home 
afterwards, repeating the lines to me and even shouting out to passers-by with 
an Outstretched finger, `Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!' until they skirted 
him as if he were drunk. But this effervescence was frenetic and likely to 
vanish in an instant; just a word or two of amiable feeling on my part, some 
suggestion that I found his companionship pleasant, could banish all such 
affairs for months. Even years. But now he came to me in such a mood and asked 
me to go to the boy's room. He was not above pressing my arm as he urged me. And 
I, dull, catatonic, gave him some miserable excuse, thinking only of Claudia, of 
the agent, of imminent disaster. I could feel it and wondered that he did not 
feel it. And finally he picked up a book from the floor and threw it at me, 
shouting, `Read your damn poems, then! Rot!' And he bounded out.
"This disturbed me. I cannot tell you how it disturbed me. I wished him cold, 
impassive, gone. I resolved to plead with Claudia to drop this. I felt 
powerless, and hopelessly fatigued. But her door had been locked until she left, 
and I had glimpsed her only for a second while Lestat was chattering, a vision 
of lace and loveliness as she slipped on her coat; puffed sleeves again and a 
violet ribbon on her breast, her white lace stockings showing beneath the hem of 
the little gown, and her white slippers immaculate. She cast a cold look at me 
as she went out.
"When I returned later, satiated and for a while too sluggish for my own 
thoughts to bother me, I gradually began to sense that this was the night. She 
would try tonight.
"I cannot tell you how I knew this. Things about the flat disturbed me, alerted 
me. Claudia moved in the back parlor behind closed doors. And I fancied I heard 
another voice there, a whisper. Claudia never brought anyone to our flat; no one 
did except Lestat, who brought his women of the streets. But I knew there was 
someone there, yet I got no strong scent, no proper sounds. And then there were 
aromas in the air of food and drink. And chrysanthemums stood in the silver vase 
on the square grand-flowers which, to Claudia, meant death.
"Then Lestat came, singing something soft under his breath, his walking stick 
making a rat-tat-tat on the rails of the spiral stairs. He came down the long 
hall, his face flushed from the kill, his lips pink; and he set his music on the 
piano. `Did I kill him or did I not kill him!' He Bashed the question at me now 
with a pointing finger.- `What's your guess?'
" 'You did not,' I said numbly. Because you invited me to go with you, and would 
never have invited me to share that kill.'
" `Ah, but! Did I kill him in a rage because you would not go. with me!' he said 
and threw back the cover from the keys. I could see that he would be able to go 
on like this until dawn. He was exhilarated.
I watched him flip through the music, thinking, Can he die? Can he actually die? 
And does she mean to do this? At one point, I wanted to go to her and tell her 
we must abandon everything, even the proposed trip, and live as we had before. 
But I had the feeling now that there was no retreat. Since the day she'd begun 
to question him, this-whatever it was to be-was inevitable. And I felt a weight 
on me, holding me in the chair.
"He pressed two chords with his hands. He had an immense reach and even in life 
could have been a fine pianist. But lie played without feeling; he was always 
outside the music, drawing it out of the piano as if by magic, by the virtuosity 
of his vampire senses and control; the music did not come through him, was not 
drawn through him by himself. `Well, did I kill him?' he asked me again.
" `No, you did not,' I said again, though I could just as easily have said the 
opposite. I was concentrating on keeping my face a mask.
"'You're right. I did not,' he said. `It excites me to be close to him, to think 
over and over, I can kill him and I will kill him but not now. And then to leave 
him and find someone who looks as nearly like him as possible. If he had 
brothers . . . why, rd kill them one by one. The family would succumb to a 
mysterious fever which dried up the very blood in their bodies!' he said, now 
mocking a barker's tone. `Claudia has a taste for families. Speaking of 
families, I suppose you heard. The Freniere place is supposed to be haunted; 
they can't keep an overseer and the slaves run away.'
"This was something I did not wish to hear in particular. Babette had died 
young, insane, restrained finally from wandering towards the ruins of Pointe du 
Lac, insisting she had seen the devil there and must find him; I'd heard of it 
in wisps of gossip. And then came the funeral notices: rd thought occasionally 
of going to her, of trying some way to rectify what I had done; and other times 
I thought it would all heal itself; and in my new life of nightly killing, I had 
grown far from the attachment rd felt for her or for my sister or any mortal. 
And I watched the tragedy finally as one might from a theater balcony, moved 
from time to time, but never sufficiently to jump the railing and join the 
players on the stage.
" `Don't talk of her,' I said.
"`Very well. I was talking of the plantation. Not her. Her! Your lady love, your 
fancy.' He smiled at me. `You know, I had it all my way finally in the end, 
didn't I? But I was telling you about my young friend and how. .
" I wish you .would play the music,' I said softly, unobtrusively, but as 
persuasively as possible. Sometimes this worked with Lestat. If I said something 
just right he found himself doing what I'd said. And now he did just that: with 
a little snarl, as if to say, `You fool,' he began playing the music. I heard 
the doors of the back parlor open and Claudia's steps move down the hall. Don't 
come, Claudia, I was thinking, feeling; go away from it before we're all 
destroyed. But she came on steadily until she reached the hall mirror. I could 
hear her opening the small table drawer, and then the zinging of her hairbrush. 
She was wearing a floral perfume. I turned slowly to face her as she appeared in 
the door, still all in white, and moved across the carpet silently toward the 
piano. She stood at the end of the keyboard, her hands folded on the wood, her 
chin resting on her hands, her eyes fixed on Lestat.
"I could see his profile and her small face beyond, looking up at him. 'What is 
it now!' he said, turning the page and letting his hand drop to his thigh. `You 
irritate me. Your very presence irritates me!' His eyes moved over the page.
" `Does it?' she said in her sweetest voice.
"'Yes, it does. And I'll tell you something else. I've met someone who would 
make a better vampire than you do.'
"This stunned me. But I didn't have to urge him to go on. `Do you get my 
meaning?' he said to her.
" `Is it supposed to frighten me?' she asked.
" `You're spoiled because you're an only child,' he said. `You need a brother. 
Or rather, I need a brother. I get weary of you both. Greedy, brooding vampires 
that haunt our own lives. I dislike it.'
" 'I suppose we could people the world with vampires, the three of us,' she 
said.
" `You think so!' he said, smiling, his voice with a note of triumph. Do you 
think you could do it? I suppose Louis has told you how it was done or how he 
thinks it was done. You don't have the power. Either of you,' he said.
"This seemed to disturb her. Something she had not accounted for. She was 
studying him. I could see she did not entirely believe him.
" `And what gave you the power?' she asked softly, but with a touch of sarcasm.
" `That, my dear, is one of those things which you may never know. For even the 
Erebus in which we live must have its aristocracy.'
" `You're a liar,' she said with a short laugh. And just as he touched his 
fingers to the keys again, she said, `But you upset my plans.'
"'Your plans?' he asked.
"'I came to make peace with you, even if you are the father of lies. You're my 
father,' she said. `I want to make peace with you. I want things to be as they 
were.'
"Now he was the one who did not believe. He threw a glance at me, then looked at 
her. `That can be. Just stop asking me questions. Stop following me. Stop 
searching in every alleyway for other vampires. There are no other vampires! And 
this is where you live and this is where you stay!' He looked confused for the 
moment, as if raising his own voice had confused him. `I take care of you. You 
don't need anything.'
" `And you don't know anything, and that is why you detest my questions. All 
that's clear. So now let's have peace, because there's nothing else to be had. I 
have a present for you.'
" `And I hope it's a beautiful woman with endowments you'll never possess;' he 
said, looking her up and down. Her face changed when he did this. It was as if 
she almost lost some control I'd never seen her lose. But then she just shook 
her head and reached out one small, rounded arm and tugged at his sleeve.
" `I meant what I said. I'm weary of arguing with you. Hell is hatred, people 
living together in eternal hatred. We're not in hell. You can take the present 
or not, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Only let's have an end to all this. 
Before Louis, in disgust, leaves us both.' She was urging him now to leave the 
piano, bringing down the wooden cover again over the keys, turning him on the 
piano stool until his eyes followed her to the door.
" `You're serious. Present, what do you mean, present?'
" `You haven't fed enough, I can tell by your color, by your eyes. You've never 
fed enough at this hour. Let's say that I can give you a precious moment. Suffer 
the little children to come unto me;' she whispered, and was gone. He looked at 
me. I said nothing. I night as well have been drugged. I could see the curiosity 
in his face, the suspicion. He followed her down the hall. And then I heard him 
let out a long, conscious moan, a perfect mingling of hunger and lust'
"When I reached the door, and I took my time, he was bending over the settee. 
Two small boys lay there, nestled among the soft velvet pillows, totally 
abandoned to sleep as children can be, their pink mouths open, their small round 
faces utterly smooth. Their skin was moist, radiant, the curls of the darker of 
the two damp and pressed to the forehead. I saw at once by their pitiful and 
identical clothes that they were orphans. And they had ravaged a meal set before 
them on our best china. The tablecloth was stained with wine, and a small bottle 
stood half full among the greasy plates and forks. But there was an aroma in the 
room I did not like. I moved closer, better to see the sleeping ones, and I 
could see their throats were bare but untouched. Lestat had sunk down beside the 
darker one; he was by far the more beautiful. He might have been lifted to the 
painted dome of a cathedral. No more than seven years old, he had that perfect 
beauty that is of neither sex, but angelic. Lestat brought his hand down gently 
on the pale throat, and then he touched the silken lips. He let out a sigh which 
had again that longing, that sweet, painful anticipation. `Oh . . . Claudia . . 
: he sighed. `You've outdone yourself. Where did you find them?'
"She said nothing. She had receded to a dark armchair and sat back against two 
large pillows, her legs out straight on the rounded cushion, her ankles drooping 
so that you did not see the bottom of her white slippers but the curved insteps 
and the tight, delicate little straps. She was staring at Lestat. `Drunk on 
brandy wine,' she said. `A thimbleful!' and gestured to the table. 'I thought of 
you when I saw them . . . I thought if I share this with him, even he will 
forgive.'
"He was warmed by her flattery. He looked at her now and reached out and 
clutched her white lace ankle. `Ducky!' he whispered to, her and laughed, but 
then he hushed, as if he didn't wish to wake the doomed children. He gestured to 
her, intimately, seductively, `Come sit beside him. You take him, and I'll take 
this one. Come.' He embraced her as she passed and nestled beside the other boy. 
He stroked the boy's moist hair, he ran his fingers over the rounded lids and 
along the fringe of lashes. And then he put his whole softened hand across the 
boy's face and felt at the temples, cheeks, and jaw, massaging the unblemished 
flesh. He had forgotten I was there or she was there, but he withdrew his hand 
and sat still for a moment, as though his desire was making him dizzy. He 
glanced at the ceiling and then down at the perfect feast. He turned the boy's 
head slowly against the back of the couch, and the boy's eyebrows tensed for an 
instant and a moan escaped his lips.
"Claudia's eyes were steady on Lestat, though now she raised her left hand and 
slowly undid the buttons of the child who lay beside her and reached inside the 
shabby little shirt and felt the bare flesh. Lestat did the same, but suddenly 
it was as if his hand had life itself and drew his arm into the shirt and around 
the boy's small chest in a. tight embrace; and Lestat slid down off the cushions 
of the couch to his knees on the floor. his arm locked to the boy's body. 
Pulling it up close to him so that his face was buried in the boy's neck. His 
lips moved over the neck and over the chest and over the tiny nipple of the 
chest and then, putting his other arm into the open shirt, so that the boy lay 
hopelessly wound in both arms, he drew the boy up tight and sank his teeth into 
his throat. The boy's head fell back, the curls loose as he was lifted, and 
again he let out a small moan and his eyelids fluttered-but never opened. And 
Lestat knelt, the boy pressed against him, sucking hard, his own back arched and 
rigid, his body rocking back and forth carrying the boy, his long moans rising 
and falling in time with the slow rocking, until suddenly his whole body tensed, 
and his hands seemed to grope for some way to push the boy away, as if the boy 
himself in his helpless slumber were clinging to Lestat; and finally he embraced 
the boy again and moved slowly forward over him, letting him down among the 
pillows, the sucking softer, now almost inaudible.
"He withdrew. His hands pressed the boy down. He knelt there, his head thrown 
back, so the wavy blond hair bung loose and disheveled. And then he slowly sank 
to the floor, turning, his back against the leg of the couch. `Ah . . . God . . 
: he whispered, his head back, his lids half-mast. I could see the color rushing 
to his cheeks, rushing into his hands. One hand lay on his bent knee, 
fluttering, and then it lay still.
"Claudia had not moved. She lay like a Botticelli angel beside the unharmed boy. 
The other's body already withered, the neck like a fractured stem, the heavy 
head falling now at an odd angle, the angle of death, into the pillow.
"But something was wrong. Lestat was staring at the ceiling. I could see his 
tongue between his teeth. He lay too still, the tongue, as it were, trying to 
get out of the mouth, trying to move past the barrier of the teeth and touch the 
lip. He appeared to shiver, his shoulders convulsing . . . then relaxing 
heavily; yet he did not move. A veil had fallen over his clear gray eyes. He was 
peering at the ceiling. Then a sound came out of him. I stepped forward from the 
shadows of the hallway, but Claudia said in a sharp hiss, `Go back!'
" `Louis . . : he was saying. I could hear it now . . `Louis . . . Louis. . .'
" `Don't you like it, Lestat?' she asked him.
" `Something's wrong with it,' he gasped, and his eyes widened as if the mere 
speaking were a colossal effort. He could not move. I saw it. He could not move 
at all. `Claudia!' He gasped again, and his eyes rolled towards her.
" `Don't you like the taste of children's blood . . . ?' she asked softly.
" `Louis . . : he whispered, finally lifting his head just for an instant. It 
fell back on the couch. `Louis, it's . . . it's absinthe! Too much absinthe!' he 
gasped. `She's poisoned them with it. She's poisoned me. Louis. . . : He tried 
to raise his hand. I drew nearer, the table between us.
" `Stay back!' she said again. And now she slid off the couch and approached 
him, peering down into his face as he had peered at the child. `Absinthe, 
Father,' she said, `and laudanum!'
" `Demon!' he said to her. `Louis . . . put me in my coffin.' He struggled to 
rise. `Put me in my coffin!' His voice was hoarse, barely audible. The hand 
fluttered, lifted, and fell back.
" 'I'll put you in your coffin, Father,' she said, as though she were soothing 
him. `I'll put you in it forever.' And then, from beneath the pillows of the 
couch, she drew a kitchen knife.
" 'Claudia! Don't do this thing!' I said to her. But she flashed at me a 
virulency I'd never seen in her face, and as I stood there paralyzed, she gashed 
his throat, and he let out a sharp, choking cry. `God!' he shouted out. `God!'
"The blood poured out of him, down his shirt front, down his coat. It poured as 
it might never pour from a human being, all the blood with which he had filled 
himself before the child and from the child; and he kept turning his head, 
twisting, making the bubbling gash gape. She sank the knife into his chest now 
and he pitched forward, his mouth wide, his fangs exposed, both hands 
convulsively flying towards the knife, fluttering around its handle, slipping 
off its handle. He looked up at me, the hair falling down into his eyes. `Louis! 
Louis!' He let out one more gasp and fell sideways on the carpet. She stood 
looking down at him. The blood flowed everywhere like water. He was groaning, 
trying to raise himself, one arm pinned beneath his chest, the other shoving at 
the floor. And now, suddenly, she flew at him and clamping both arms about his 
neck, bit deep into him as he struggled. `Louis, Louis!' he gasped over and 
over, struggling, trying desperately to throw her off; but she rode him, her 
body lifted by his shoulder, hoisted and dropped, hoisted and dropped, until she 
pulled away; and, finding the floor quickly, she backed away from him, her hands 
to her lips, her eyes for the moment clouded, then clear. I turned away from 
her, my body convulsed by what I'd seen, unable to look any longer. `Louis!' she 
said; but I only shook my head. For a moment, the whole house seemed to sway. 
But she said, `Look what's happening to him!'
"He had ceased to move. He lay now on his back. And his entire body was 
shriveling, drying up, the skin thick and wrinkled, and so white that all the 
tiny veins showed through it. I gasped, but I could not take my eyes off it, 
even as the shape of the bones began to show through, his lips drawing back from 
his teeth, the flesh of his nose drying to two gaping holes. But his eyes, they 
remained the same, staring wildly at the ceiling, the irises dancing from side 
to side, even as the flesh cleaved to the bones, became nothing but a parchment 
wrapping for the bones, the clothes hollow and limp over the skeleton that 
remained. Finally the irises rolled to the top of his head, and the whites of 
his eyes went dim. The thing lay still. A great mass of wavy blond hair, a coat, 
a pair of gleaming boots; and this horror that had been Lestat, and I staring 
helplessly at it."
"For a long time, Claudia merely stood there. Blood had soaked the carpet, 
darkening the woven wreaths of flowers. It gleamed sticky and black on the 
floorboards. It stained her dress, her white shoes, her cheek. She wiped at it 
with a crumpled napkin, took a swipe at the impossible stains of the dress, and 
then she said, `Louis, you must help me get him out of here!'
"I said, `Not' I'd turned my back on her, on the corpse at her feet.
" `Are you mad, Louis? It can't remain here!' she said to me. `And the boys. You 
must help met The other one's dead from the absinthe! Louis!'
"I knew that this was true, necessary; and yet it seemed impossible.
"She had to prod me then, almost lead me every step of the way. We found the 
kitchen stove still heaped with the bones of the mother and daughter she'd 
killed-a dangerous blunder, a stupidity. So she scraped them out now into a sack 
and dragged the sack across the courtyard stones to the carriage. I hitched the 
horse myself, shushing the groggy coachman, and drove the hearse out of the 
city, fast in the direction of the Bayou St. Jean, towards the dark swamp that 
stretched to Lake Pontchartrain. She sat beside me, silent, as we rode on and on 
until we'd passed the gas-lit gates of the few country houses, and the shell 
road narrowed and became rutted, the swamp rising on either side of us, a great 
wall of seemingly impenetrable cypress and vine. I could smell the stench of the 
muck, hear the rustling of the animals.
"Claudia had wrapped Lestat's, body in a sheet before I would even touch it, and 
then, to my horror, she had sprinkled it over with the long-stemmed 
chrysanthemums. So it had a sweet, funereal smell as I lifted it last of all 
from the carriage. It was almost weightless, as limp as something made of knots 
and cords, as I put it over my shoulder and moved down into the dark water, the 
water rising and filling my boots, my feet seeking some path in the ooze 
beneath, away from where I'd laid the two boys. I went deeper and deeper in with 
Lestat's remains, though why, I did not know. And finally, when I could barely 
see the pale space of the road and the sky which was coming dangerously close to 
dawn, I let his body slip down out of my arms into the water. I stood there 
shaken, looking at the amorphous form of the white sheet beneath the slimy 
surface. The numbness which had protected me since the carriage left the Rue 
Royale threatened to lift and leave me flayed suddenly, staring, thinking: This 
is Lestat. This is all of transformation and mystery, dead, gone into eternal 
darkness. I felt a pull suddenly, as if some force were urging me to go down 
with him, to descend into the dark water and never come back. It was so distinct 
and so strong that it made the articulation of voices seem only a murmur by 
comparison. It spoke without language, saying, `You know what you must do. Come 
down into the darkness. Let it all go away.'
"But at that moment I heard Claudia's voice. She was calling my name. I turned, 
and, through the tangled vines, I saw her distant and tiny, like a white flame 
on the faint luminescent shell road.
"That morning, she wound her arms around me, pressed her head against my chest 
in the closeness of the coffin, whispering she loved me, that we were free now 
of Lestat forever. `I love you, Louis,' she said over and over as the darkness 
finally came down with the lid and mercifully blotted out all consciousness.
"When I awoke, she was going through his things. It was a tirade, silent, 
controlled, but filled with a fierce anger. She pulled the contents from 
cabinets, emptied drawers onto the carpets, pulled one jacket after another from 
his armoires, turning the pockets inside out, throwing the coins and theater 
tickets and bits and pieces of paper away. I stood in the. door of his room, 
astonished, watching her. His coffin lay there, heaped with scarves and pieces 
of tapestry. I had the compulsion to open it. I had the wish to see him there. 
`Nothing!' she finally said in disgust. .She wadded the clothes into the grate. 
`Not a hint of where he came from, who made him!' she said. `Not a scrap' She 
looked to me as if for sympathy. I turned away from her. I was unable to look at 
her. I moved back into that bedroom which I kept for myself, that room filled 
with my own books and what things I'd saved from my mother and sister, and I sat 
on .the bed. I could hear her at the door, but I would not look at her. `He 
deserved to die!' she said to me.
" `Then we deserve to die. The same way. Every night of our lives,' I said back 
to her. `Go away from me.' It was as if my words were my thoughts, my mind alone 
only formless confusion. `I'll care for you because you can't care for yourself. 
But I don't want you near me. Sleep in that box you bought for yourself. Don't 
come near me.'
" `I told you I was going to do it. I told you . : ' she said. Never had her 
voice sounded so fragile, so like a little silvery bell. I looked up at her, 
startled but unshaken. Her face seemed not her face. Never had anyone shaped 
such agitation into the features of a doll. `Louis, I told you!' she said, her 
lips quivering. `I did it for us. So we could be free.' I couldn't stand the 
sight of her. Her beauty, her seeming innocence, and this terrible agitation. I 
went past her, perhaps knocking her backwards, I don't know. And I was almost to 
the railing of the steps when I heard a strange sound.
"Never in all the years of our life together had I heard this sound. Never since 
the night long ago when I had first found her, a mortal child, clinging to her 
mother. She was crying!
"It drew me back now against my will. Yet it sounded so unconscious, so 
hopeless, as though she meant no one to hear it, or didn't care if it were heard 
by the whole world. I found her lying on my bed in the place where I often sat 
to read, her knees drawn up, her whole frame shaking with her sobs. The sound of 
it was terrible. It was more heartfelt, more awful than her mortal crying had 
ever been. I sat down slowly, gently, beside her and put my hand on her 
shoulder. She lifted her head, startled, her eyes wide, her mouth trembling. Her 
face was stained with tears, tears that were tinted with blood. Her eyes brimmed 
with them, and the faint touch of red stained her tiny hand. She didn't seem to 
be conscious of this, to see it. She pushed her hair back from her forehead. Her 
body quivered then with a long, low, pleading sob.
" `Louis . . . if I lose you, I have nothing,' she whispered. `I would undo it 
to have you back. I can't undo what I've done.' She put her arms around me, 
climbing up against me, sobbing against my heart. My hands were reluctant to 
touch her; and then they moved as if I couldn't stop them, to enfold her and 
hold her and stroke her hair. `I can't live without you . . : she whispered. `I 
would die rather than live without you. I would die the same way he died. I 
can't bear you to look at me the way you did. I cannot bear it if you do not 
love Mel' Her sobs grew worse, more bitter, until finally I bent and kissed her 
soft neck and' cheeks. Winter plums. Plums from an enchanted wood where the 
fruit never falls from the boughs. Where the flowers never wither and die. `All 
right, my dear . .
I said to her. `All right, my love . . : And I rocked her slowly, gently in my 
arms, until she dozed, murmuring something about our being eternally happy, free 
of Lestat forever, beginning the, great adventure of our lives."
"The great adventure of our lives. What does It mean to die when you can live 
until the end of the world? And what is `the end of the world' except a phrase, 
because who knows even what is the world itself? I had now lived in two 
centuries, seen the illusions of one utterly shattered by the other, been 
eternally young and eternally ancient, . possessing no illusions, living moment 
to moment in a way that made me picture a silver clock ticking in a void: the, 
painted face, the delicately carved hands looked upon by no one, looking out at 
no one, illuminated by a light which was not a light, like the light by which 
God made the world before He had made light. Ticking, ticking, ticking, the 
precision of the clock, in a room as vast as the universe.
"I was walking the streets again, Claudia gone her way to kill, the perfume of 
her hair and dress lingering on my fingertips, on my coat, my eyes moving far 
ahead of me like the pale beam of a lantern. I found myself at the cathedral: 
What does it mean to die when you can live until the end of the world? I was 
thinking of my brother's death, of the incense and the rosary. I had the desire 
suddenly to be in that funeral room, listening to the sound of the women's 
voices rising and falling with the Aves, the clicking of the beads, the smell of 
the wax. I could remember the crying. It was palpable, as if it were just 
yesterday, just behind a door. I saw myself walking fast down a corridor and 
gently giving the door a shove.
"The great facade of the cathedral rose in a dark mass opposite the square, but 
the doors were open and I could see a soft, flickering light within. It was 
Saturday evening early, and the people were going to confession for Sunday Mass 
and Communion. Candles burned dim in the chandeliers. At the far end of the nave 
the altar loomed out of the shadows, laden with white flowers. It was to the old 
church on this spot that they had brought my brother for the final service 
before the cemetery. And I realized suddenly that I hadn't been in this place 
since, never once come up the stone steps, crossed the porch, and passed through 
the open doors.
"I had no fear. If anything, perhaps, I longed for something to happen, for the 
stones to tremble as I entered the shadowy foyer and saw the distant tabernacle 
on the altar. I remembered now that I had passed here once when the windows were 
ablaze and the sound of singing poured out into Jackson Square. I had hesitated 
then, wondering if there were some secret Lestat had never told me, something 
which might destroy me were I to enter. I'd felt compelled to enter, but I had 
pushed this out of my mind, breaking loose from the fascination of the open 
doors, the throng of people making one voice. I had, had something for Claudia, 
a doll I was taking to her, a bridal doll I'd lifted from a darkened toy shop 
window and placed in a great box with ribbons and tissue paper. A doll for 
Claudia. I remembered pressing on with it, hearing the heavy vibrations of the 
organ behind me, my eyes narrow from the great blaze of the candles.
"Now I thought of that moment; that fear in me at the very sight of the altar, 
the sound of the Pange Lingua. And I thought again, persistently, of my brother. 
I could see the coin rolling along up the center aisle, the procession of 
mourners behind it. I felt no fear now. As I said, I think if anything I felt a 
longing for some fear, for some reason for fear as I moved slowly along the 
dark, stone walls. The air was chill and damp in spite of summer. The thought of 
Claudia's doll came back to me. Where was that doll? For years Claudia had 
played with that doll. Suddenly I saw myself searching for the doll, in the 
relentless and meaningless manner one searches for something in a nightmare, 
coming on doors that won't open or drawers that won't shut, struggling over and 
over against the same meaningless thing, not knowing why the effort seems so 
desperate, why the sudden sight of a chair with a shawl thrown over it inspires 
the mind with horror.
"I was in the cathedral. A woman stepped out of the confessional and passed the 
long line of those who waited. A man who should have stepped up neat did not 
move; and my eye, sensitive even in my vulnerable condition, noted this, and I 
turned to see him. He was staring at me. Quickly I turned my back on him. I 
heard him enter the confessional and shut the door. I walked up the aisle of the 
church and then, more from exhaustion than from any conviction, went into an 
empty pew and sat down. I had almost genuflected from old habit. My mind seemed 
as muddled and tortured as that of any human. I closed my eyes for a moment and 
tried to banish all thoughts. Hear and see, I said to myself. And with this act 
of will, my senses emerged from the torment. All around me in the gloom I heard 
the whisper of prayers, the tiny click of the rosary beads; soft the sighing of 
the woman who knelt now at the Twelfth Station. Rising from the sea of wooden 
pews came the scent of rats. A rat moving somewhere near the altar, a rat in the 
great woodcarved side altar of the Virgin Mary. The gold candlesticks shimmered 
on the altar; a rich white chrysanthemum bent suddenly on its stem, droplets 
glistening on the crowded petals, a sour fragrance rising from a score of vases, 
from altars and side altars, from statues of Virgins and Christs and saints. I 
stared at the statues; I became obsessed suddenly and completely with the 
lifeless profiles, the staring eyes, the empty hands, the frozen folds. Then my 
body convulsed with such violence that I found myself pitched forward, my hand 
on the pew before me. It was a cemetery of dead forms, of funereal effigy and 
stone angels. I looked up and saw myself in a most palpable vision ascending the 
altar steps, opening the tiny sacrosanct tabernacle, reaching with monstrous 
hands for the consecrated ciborium, and taking the Body of Christ and strewing 
Its white wafers all over the carpet; and walking then on the sacred wafers, 
walking up and down before the altar, giving Holy Communion to the dust. I rose 
up now in the pew and stood there staring at this vision. I knew full well the 
meaning of it.
"God did not live in this church; these statues gave an image to nothingness. 1 
was the supernatural in this cathedral. I was the only supermortal thing that 
stood conscious under this roof! Loneliness. Loneliness to the point of madness. 
The cathedral crumbled in my vision; the saints listed and fell. Rats ate the 
Holy Eucharist and nested on the sills. A solitary rat with an enormous tail 
stood tugging and gnawing at the rotted altar cloth until the candlesticks fell 
and rolled on the slime-covered stones. And I remained standing. Untouched. 
Undead-reaching out suddenly for the plaster hand of the Virgin and seeing it 
break in my hand, so that I held the hand crumbling in my palm, the pressure of 
my thumb turning it to powder.
"And then suddenly through the ruins, up through the open door through which I 
could see a wasteland in all directions, even the great river frozen over and 
stuck with the encrusted ruins of ships, up through these ruins now came a 
funeral procession, a band of pale, white men and women, monsters with gleaming 
eyes and flowing black clothes, the coffin rumbling on the wooden wheels, the 
rats scurrying across the broken and buckling marble, the procession advancing, 
so that I could see then Claudia in the procession, her eyes staring from behind 
a thin black veil, one gloved hand locked upon a black prayer book, the other on 
the coffin as it moved beside her. And there now in the coffin; beneath a glass 
cover, I saw to my horror the skeleton of Lestat, the wrinkled skin now pressed 
into the very texture of his bones, his eyes but sockets, his blond hair 
billowed on the white satin.
"The procession stopped. The mourners moved out, filling the dusty pews without 
a sound, and Claudia, turning with her book, opened it and lifted the veil back 
from her face, her eyes fixed on me as her finger touched the page. `And now art 
thou cursed from the earth,' she whispered, her whisper rising in echo in the 
ruins. `And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to 
receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it 
shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive and a vagabond 
shalt thou be in the earth . . . and whoever slayeth thee, vengeance shall be 
taken on him seven-fold.'
"I shouted at her, I screamed, the scream rising up out of the depths of my 
being like some great rolling black force that broke from my lips and sent my 
body reeling against my will. A terrible sighing rose from the mourners, a 
chorus growing louder and louder, as I turned to see them all about me, pushing 
me into the aisle against the very sides of the coffin, so that I turned to get 
my balance and found both my hands upon it. And I stood there staring down not 
at the remains of Lestat, but at the body of my mortal brother. A quiet 
descended, as if a veil had fallen over all and made their forms dissolve 
beneath its soundless folds. There was my brother, blond and young and sweet as 
he had been in life, as real and warm to me now as he'd been years and years 
beyond which I could never have remembered him thus, so perfectly was he 
re-created, so perfectly in every detail. His blond hair brushed back from his 
forehead, his eyes closed as if he slept, his smooth fingers around the crucifix 
on his breast, his lips so pink and silken I could hardly bear to see them and 
not touch them.
And as I reached out just to touch the softness of his skin, the vision ended.
"I was sitting still in the Saturday night cathedral, the smell of the tapers 
thick in the motionless air, the woman of the stations gone and darkness 
gathering behind me, across from me, and now above me. A boy appeared in the 
black cassock of a lay brother, with a long extinguisher on a golden pole, 
putting its little funnel down upon one candle and then another and then 
another. I was stupefied He glanced at me and then away, as if not to disturb a 
man deep in prayer. And then, as he moved on up to the next chandelier, I felt a 
hand on my shoulder.
"That two humans should pass this close to me without my hearing, without my 
even caring, registered somewhere within me that I was in danger, but I did not 
care. I looked up now and saw a gray-haired priest. `You wish to go to 
confession?' he asked. 'I was about to lock up the church.' He narrowed his eyes 
behind his thick glasses. The only light now came from the racks of little 
red-glass candles which burned before the saints; and shadows leaped upon the 
towering walls. `You are troubled, aren't you? Can I help you?'
" `It's too late, too late,' I whispered to him, and rose to go. He backed away 
from me, still apparently unaware of anything about my appearance that should 
alarm him, and said kindly, to reassure me, `No, it's still early. Do you want 
to come into the confessional?'
"For a moment I just stared at him. I was tempted to smile. And then it occurred 
to me to do it. But even as I followed him down the aisle, in the shadows of the 
vestibule, I knew this would be nothing, that it. was madness. Nevertheless, I 
knelt down in the small wooden booth,. my hands folded on the priedieu as he sat 
in the booth beside it and slid back the panel to show me the dim outline of his 
profile. I stared at him for a moment. And then I said it, lifting my hand to 
make the Sign of the Cross. `Bless me, father,. for I have sinned, sinned so 
often and so long I do not know how to change, nor how to confess before God 
what I've done.'
"' Son. God is infinite in His capacity to forgive,' he whispered to me. `Tell 
Him in the best way you know how and from your heart.'
" `Murders, father, death after death. The woman who died two nights ago in 
Jackson Square, I killed her, and thousands of others before her, one and two a 
night, father, for seventy years. I have walked the streets of New Orleans like 
the Grim Reaper and fed on human life for my own existence. I am not mortal, 
father, but immortal and damned, like angels put in hell by God. I am a 
vampire.'
"The priest turned. 'What is this, some sort of sport for you? Some joke? You 
take advantage of an old man!' he said. He slid the wooden panel back with a 
splat. Quickly I opened the door and stepped out to see him standing there. 
`Young man, do you fear God at all? Do you know the meaning of sacrilege?' He 
glared at me. Now I moved closer to him, slowly, very slowly, and at first he 
merely stared at me, outraged. Then, confused, he took a step back. The church 
was hollow, empty, black, the sacristan gone and the candles throwing ghastly 
fight only on the distant altars. They made a wreath of soft, gold fibers about 
his gray head and face. 'Then there is no mercy!' I said to him and suddenly 
clamping my hands on his shoulders, I held him in a preternatural lock from 
which he couldn't hope to move and held him close beneath my face. His mouth 
fell open in horror. `Do you see what I am! Why, if God exists, does He suffer 
me to exist!' I said to him. `You talk of sacrilege!' He dug his nails into my 
hands, trying to free himself, his missal dropping to the floor, his rosary 
clattering in the folds of his cassock. He might as well have fought the 
animated statues of the saints. I drew my lips back and showed him my virulent 
teeth. `Why does He suffer me to live?' I said. His face infuriated me, his 
fear, his contempt, his rage. I saw in it all the hatred rd seen in Babette, and 
he hissed at me, `Let me go! Devil!' in sheer mortal panic.
"I released him, watching with a sinister fascination as he floundered, moving 
up the center aisle as if he plowed through snow. And then I was after him, so 
swift that I surrounded him in an instant with my
outstretched arms, my cape throwing him into darkness, his legs scrambling 
still. He was cursing me, calling on God at the altar. And then I grabbed him on 
the very steps to the Communion rail and pulled him down to face me there and 
sank my teeth into his neck." The vampire stopped.
Sometime before, the boy had been about to light a cigarette. And he sat now 
with the match in one hand, the cigarette in the other, still as a store dummy, 
staring at the vampire. The vampire was looking at the floor. He turned 
suddenly, took the book of matches from the boy's hand, struck the match, and 
held it out. The boy bent the cigarette to receive it. He inhaled and let the 
smoke out quickly. He uncapped the bottle and took a deep drink, his eyes always 
on the vampire.
He was patient again, waiting until the vampire was ready to resume.
"I didn't remember Europe from my childhood. Not even the voyage to America, 
-really. That I had been born there was an abstract idea. Yet it had a hold over 
me which was as powerful as the hold France can have on a colonial. I spoke 
French, read French, remembered waiting for the reports of the Revolution and 
reading the Paris newspaper accounts of Napoleon's victories. I remember the 
anger I felt when he sold the colony of Louisiana to the United States. How long 
the mortal Frenchman lived in me I don't know. He was gone by this time, really, 
but there was in me that great desire to see Europe and to know it, which comes 
not only from the reading of all the literature and the philosophy, but from the 
feeling of having been shaped by Europe more deeply and keenly than the rest of 
Americans. I was a Creole who wanted to see where it had all begun.
"And so I turned my mind to this now. To divesting my closets and trunks of 
everything that was not essential to me. And very little was essential to me, 
really. And much of that might remain in the town house, to which I was certain 
I would return sooner or later, if only to move my possessions to another 
similar one and start a new life in New Orleans. I couldn't conceive of leaving 
it forever. Wouldn't. But I fixed my mind and heart on Europe.
"It began to penetrate for the first time that I might see the world if I 
wanted. That I was, as Claudia said, free.
"Meantime, she made a plan. It was her idea most definitely that we must go 
first to central Europe, where the vampire seemed most prevalent. She was 
certain we could find something there that would instruct us, explain our 
origins. But she seemed anxious for more than answers: a communion with her own 
kind. She mentioned this over and over, `My own kind,' and she said it with a 
different intonation than I might have used. She made me feel the gulf that 
separated us. In the first years of our life together, I had thought her like 
Lestat, imbibing his instinct to kill, though she shared my tastes in everything 
else. Now I knew her to be less human than either of us, less human than either 
of us might have dreamed. Not the faintest conception bound her to the 
sympathies of human existence. Perhaps this explained why-despite everything I 
had done or failed to do-she clung to me. I was not her own kind. Merely the 
closest thing to it."
"But wouldn't it have been possible," asked the boy suddenly, "to instruct her 
in the ways of the human heart the way you'd instructed her in everything else?"
"To what avail?" asked the vampire frankly. "So she night suffer as I did? Oh, 
I'll grant you I should have taught her something to prevail against her desire 
to kill Lestat. For my own sake, I should have done that. But you see, I had no 
confidence in anything else. Once fallen from grace, I had confidence in 
nothing."
The boy nodded. "I didn't mean to interrupt you. You were coming to something," 
he.. said.
"Only to the point that it was possible to forget what had happened to Lestat by 
turning my mind to Europe. And the thought of the other vampires inspired me 
also. I had not been cynical for one moment about the existence of God. Only 
lost from it. Drifting, preternatural, through the natural world.
"But we had another matter before we left for Europe. Oh, a great deal happened 
indeed. It began with the musician. He had called while I was gone that evening 
to the cathedral, and the next night he was to come again. I had dismissed the 
servants and went down to him myself. And his appearance startled me at once.
"He was much thinner than rd remembered him and very pale, with a moist gleam 
about his face that suggested fever. And he was perfectly miserable. When I told 
him Lestat had gone away, he refused at first to believe me and began insisting 
Lestat would have left him some message, something. And then he went off up the 
Rue Royale, talking to himself about it, as if he had little awareness of anyone 
around him. I caught up with him under a gas lamp. `He did leave you something,' 
I said, quickly feeling for my wallet. I didn't know how much I had in it, but I 
planned to give it to him. It was several hundred dollars. I put it into his 
hands. They were so thin I could see the blue veins pulsing beneath the watery 
skin. Now he became exultant, and I sensed at once that the matter went beyond 
the money. `Then he spoke of me, he told you to give this to me!' he said, 
holding onto it as though it were a relic. `He must have said something else to 
you!' He stared at me with bulging, tortured eyes. I didn't answer him at once, 
because during these moments I had seen the puncture wounds in his neck. Two red 
scratch-like marks to the right, just above his soiled collar. The money flapped 
in his hand; he was oblivious to the evening traffic of the street, the people 
who pushed close around us. `Put it away,' I whispered. `He did speak of you, 
that it was important you go 'on with your music.'
"He stared at me as if anticipating something else. `Yes? Did he say anything 
else?' he asked me. I didn't know what to tell him. I would have made up 
anything if it would have given him comfort, and also kept him away. It was 
painful for me to speak of Lestat; the words evaporated on my lips. And the 
puncture wounds amazed me. I couldn't fathom this. I was saying nonsense to the 
boy finally-that Lestat wished him well, that he had to take a steamboat up to 
St. Louis, that he would be back, that war was imminent and he had business 
there . . . the boy hungering after every word, as if he couldn't possibly get 
enough and was pushing on with it for the thing he wanted. He was trembling; the 
sweat broke out fresh on his forehead as he stood there pressing me, and 
suddenly he bit his lip hard and said, `But why did he go!' as if nothing had 
sufficed.
" `What is it?' I asked him. `What did you need from him? I'm sure he would want 
me to . .
" `He was my friend!' He turned on me suddenly, his voice dropping with 
repressed outrage.
" `You're not well,' I said to him. `You need rest. There's something . . .' and 
now I pointed to it, attentive to his every move `. . . on your throat.' He 
didn't even know what I meant. His fingers searched for the place, found it., 
rubbed it.
"'What does it matter? I don't know. The insects, they're everywhere,' he said, 
turning away from me. `Did he say anything else?'
"For a long while I watched him move up the Rue Royale, a frantic, lanky figure 
in rusty black, for whom the bulk of the traffic made way.
"I told Claudia at once about the wound on his throat.
"It was our last night in New Orleans. We'd board the ship just before midnight 
tomorrow for an earlymorning departure. We had agreed to walk out together. She 
was being solicitous, and there was something remarkably sad in her face, 
something which had not left after she had cried. `What could the marks mean?' 
she asked me now. `That he fed on the boy when the boy slept, that the boy 
allowed it? I can't imagine . . .' she said.
" `Yes, that must be what it is.' But I was uncertain. I remembered now Lestat's 
remark to Claudia that he knew a boy who would make a better vampire than she. 
Had he planned to do that? Planned to make another one of us?
" `It doesn't matter now, Louis,' she reminded me. We had to say our farewell to 
New Orleans. We were walking away from the crowds of the Rue Royale. My senses 
were keen to all around me, holding it close, reluctant to say this was the last 
night.
"The old French city had been for the most part burned a long time ago, and the 
architecture of these days was as it is now, Spanish, which meant that, as we 
walked slowly through the very narrow street where one cabriolet had to stop for 
another, we passed whitewashed walls and great courtyard gates that revealed 
distant lamplit courtyard paradises like our own, only each seemed to hold such 
promise, such sensual mystery. Great banana trees stroked the galleries of the 
inner courts, and masses of fern and flower crowded the mouth of the passage. 
Above, in the dark, figures sat on the balconies, their backs to the open doors, 
their hushed voices and the flapping of their fans barely audible above the soft 
river breeze; and over the walls grew wisteria and passiflora so thick that we 
could brush against it as we passed and stop occasionally at this place or that 
to pluck a luminescent rose or tendrils of honeysuckle. Through the high windows 
we saw again and again the play of candlelight on richly embossed plaster 
ceilings and often the bright iridescent wreath of a crystal chandelier. 
Occasionally a figure dressed for evening appeared at the railings, the glitter 
of jewels at her throat, her perfume adding a lush evanescent spice to the 
flowers in the air.
"We had our favorite streets, gardens, corners, but inevitably we reached the 
outskirts of the old city and saw the rise of swamp. Carriage after carriage 
passed us coming in from the Bayou Road bound for the theater or the opera. But 
now the lights of the city lay behind us, and its mingled scents were drowned in 
the thick odor of swamp decay. The very sight of the tall, wavering trees, their 
limbs hung with moss, had sickened me, made me think of Lestat. I was thinking 
of him as I'd thought of my brother's body. I was seeing him sunk deep among the 
roots of cypress and oak, that hideous withered form folded in the white sheet. 
I wondered if the creatures of the dark shunned him, knowing instinctively the 
parched, crackling thing there was virulent, or whether they swarmed about him 
in the reeking water, picking his ancient dried flesh from the bones.
"I turned away from the swamps, back to the heart of the old city, and felt the 
gentle press of Claudia's hand comforting. She had gathered a natural bouquet 
from all the garden walls, and she held it crushed to the bosom of her yellow 
dress, her face buried in its perfume. Now she said to me in such a whisper that 
I bent my ear to her, 'Louis, it troubles you. You know the remedy. Let the 
flesh . . . let the flesh instruct the mind.' She let my hand go, and I watched 
her move away from me, turning once to whisper the same command. 'Forget him. 
Let the flesh instruct the mind. . .
It brought back to me that book of poems I'd held in my hand when she first 
spoke these words to me, and I save the verse upon the page:
Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin 
was as white as leprosy, The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she, Who thicks man's 
blood with cold.
"She was smiling from the far corner, a bit of yellow silk visible for a moment 
in the narrowing dark, then gone. My companion, my companion forever.
"I was turning into the Rue Dumaine, moving past darkened windows. A lamp died 
very slowly behind a broad scrim of heavy lace, the shadow of the pattern on the 
brick expanding, growing fainter, then vanishing into blackness. I moved on, 
nearing the house of Madame LeClair, hearing faint but shrill the violins from 
the upstairs parlor and then the thin metallic laughter of the guests. I stood 
across from the house in the shadows, seeing a small handful of them moving in 
the lighted room; from window to window to window moved one guest, a pale 
lemon-colored wine in his stem glass, his face turned towards the moon as if he 
sought something from a better vantage and found it finally at the last window, 
his hand on the dark drape.
"Across from me a door stood open in the brick wall, and a light fell on the 
passage at the far end. I moved silently over the narrow street and met the 
thick aromas of the kitchen rising on the air past the gate. The slightly 
nauseating smell of cooking meat. I stepped into the passage. Someone had just 
walked fast across the courtyard and shut a rear door. But then I saw another 
figure. She stood by the kitchen fire, a lean black woman with a brilliant 
tignon around her head, her features delicately chiseled and gleaming in the 
light like a figure in diorite. She stirred the mixture in the kettle. I caught 
the sweet smell of the spices and the fresh green of marjoram and bay; and then 
in a wave came the horrid smell of the cooking meat, the blood and flesh 
decaying in the boiling fluids. I drew near and saw her set down her long iron 
spoon and stand with her hands on her generous, tapered hips, the white of her 
apron sash outlining her small, fine waist. The juices of the pot foamed on the 
lip and spit in the glowing coals below. Her dark odor came to me, her dusky 
spiced perfume, stronger than the curious mixture from the pot, tantalizing as I 
drew nearer and rested back against a wall of matted vine. Upstairs the thin 
violins began a waltz, and the floorboards groaned with the dancing couples. The 
jasmine of the wall enclosed me and then receded like water leaving the 
clean-swept beach; and again I sensed her salt perfume. She had moved to the 
kitchen door, her long black neck gracefully bent as she peered into the shadows 
beneath the lighted window. 'Monsieur!' she said, and stepped out now into the 
shaft of yellow light. It fell on her great round breasts and long sleek silken 
arms and now on the long cold beauty of her face. 'You're looking for the party, 
Monsieur?' she asked. 'The party's upstairs. . .
" 'No, my dear, I wasn't looking for the party,' I said to her, moving forward 
out of the shadows. 'I was looking for you."'
"Everything was ready when I woke the neat evening: the wardrobe trunk on its 
way to the ship as well as  chest which contained a coffin; the servants gone; 
the furnishings draped in white. The sight of the tickets and a collection of 
notes of credit and some other papers all placed together in a flat black wallet 
made the trip emerge into the bright fight of reality. I would have forgone 
killing had that been possible, and so I took care of this early, and 
perfunctorily, as did Claudia; and as it neared time for us to leave, I was 
alone in the flat, waiting for her. She had been gone too long for my nervous 
frame of mind. I feared for her-though she could bewitch almost anyone into 
assisting her if she found herself too far away from home, and had many times 
persuaded strangers to bring her to her very door, to her father, who thanked 
them profusely for returning his lost daughter.
"When she came now she was running, and I fancied as I put my book down that she 
had forgotten the time. She thought it later than it was. By my pocket watch we 
had an hour. But the instant she reached the door, I knew that this was wrong. 
`Louis, the doors!' she gasped, her chest heaving, her hand at her heart. She 
ran back down the passage with me behind her and, as she desperately signaled 
me, I shut up the doors to the gallery. `What is it?' I asked her. `What's come 
over you?' But she was moving to the front windows now, the long French windows 
which opened onto the narrow balconies over the street. She lifted the shade of 
the lamp and quickly blew out the fame. The room went dark, and then lightened 
gradually with the illumination of the street. She stood panting, her hand on 
her breast, and then she reached out for me and drew me close to her beside the 
window.
" `Someone followed me,' she whispered now. I could hear him block after block 
behind me. At first, I thought it was nothing!' She stopped for breath, her face 
blanched in the bluish light that came from the windows across the way. `Louis, 
it was the musician,' she whispered.
" But what does that matter? He must have seen you with Lestat.'
" `Louis, he's down there. Look out the window. Try to see him.' She seemed so 
shaken, almost afraid.
As if she would not stand exposed on the threshold. I stepped out on the 
balcony, though I held her hand as she hovered by the drape; and she held me so 
tightly that it seemed she feared for me. It was eleven o'clock and the Rue 
Royale for the moment was quiet: shops shut, the traffic of the theater just 
gone away. A door slammed somewhere to my right, and I saw a woman and a man 
emerge and hurry towards the corner, the woman's face hidden beneath an enormous 
white hat. Their steps died away. I could see no one, sense no one. I could hear 
Claudia's labored breathing. Something stirred in the house; I started, .then 
recognized it as the jingling and rustling of the birds. We'd forgotten the 
birds. But Claudia had started worse than I, and she pulled near to me. `There 
is no one, Claudia . . : I started to whisper to her.
"Then I saw the musician.
"He had been standing so still in the doorway of the furniture shop that I had 
been totally unaware of him, and he must have wanted this to be so. For now he 
turned his face upwards, towards me, and it shone from the dark like a white 
light. The frustration and care were utterly erased from his stark features; his 
great dark eyes peered at me from the white flesh. He had become a vampire.
" `I see him,' I murmured to her, my lips as still as possible, my eyes holding 
his eyes. I felt her move closer, her hand trembling, a heart beating in the 
palm of her hand. She let out a gasp when she saw him now. But at that same 
moment, something chilled me even as I stared at him and he did not move. 
Because I heard a step in the lower passage. I heard the gate hinge groan. And 
then that step again, deliberate, loud, echoing under the arched ceiling of the 
carriage way, deliberate, familiar. That step advancing now up the spiral 
stairs. A thin scream rose from Claudia, and then she caught it at once with her 
hand. The vampire in the furniture shop door bad not moved. And I knew the step 
on the stairs. I knew the step on the porch. It was Lestat. Lestat pulling on 
the door, now pounding on it, now ripping at it, as if to tear it loose from the 
very wall. Claudia moved back into the corner of the room, her body bent, as if 
someone had struck her a sharp blow, her eyes moving frantically from the figure 
in the street to me. The pounding on the door grew louder. And then I heard his 
voice. `Louis!' he called to me. `Louis!' he roared against the door. And then 
came the smash of the back parlor window. And I could hear the latch turning 
from within. Quickly, I grabbed the lamp, struck a match hard and broke it in my 
frenzy, then got the flame as I wanted it and held the small vessel of kerosene 
poised in my hand `Get away from the window. Shut it,' I told her. And she 
obeyed as if the sudden clear, spoken command released her from a paroxysm of 
fear. `And light the other lamps, now, at once.' I heard her crying as she 
struck the match. Lestat was coming down the hallway.
"And then he stood at the door. I let out a gasp, and, not meaning to, I must 
have taken several steps backwards when I saw him. I could hear Claudia's cry. 
It was Lestat beyond question, restored and intact as he hung in the doorway, 
his head thrust forward, his eyes bulging, as if he were drunk and needed the 
door jamb to keep him from plunging headlong into the room. His skin was a mass 
of scars, a hideous covering of injured flesh, as though every wrinkle of his 
`death' had left its mark upon him. He was seared and marked as if by the random 
strokes of a hot poker, and his once clear gray eyes were shot with hemorrhaged 
vessels.
" `Stay back . . . for the love of God . . : I whispered. `I'll throw it at you. 
I'll burn you alive,' I said to him. And at the same moment I could hear a sound 
to my left, something scraping, scratching against the facade of the town house. 
It was the other one. I saw his hands now on the wrought-iron balcony. Claudia 
let out a piercing scream as he threw his weight against the glass doors.
"I cannot tell you all that happened then. I cannot possibly recount it as it 
was. I remember heaving the lamp at Lestat; it smashed at his feet and the 
flames rose at once from the carpet. I had a torch then in my hands, a great 
tangle of sheet I'd pulled from the couch and ignited in the flames. But I was 
struggling with him before that, kicking and driving savagely at his great 
strength. And somewhere in the background were Claudia's panicked screams. And 
the other lamp was broken. And the drapes of the windows blazed. I remember that 
his clothes reeked of kerosene and that he was at one point smacking wildly at 
the flames. He was clumsy, sick, unable to keep his balance; but when he had me 
in his grip, I even tore at his fingers with my teeth to get him -off. There was 
noise rising in the street, shouts, the sound of a bell. The room itself had 
fast become an inferno, and I did see in one clear blast of light Claudia 
battling the fledgling vampire. He seemed unable to close his hands on her, like 
a clumsy human after a bird. I remember rolling over and over with Lestat in the 
flames, feeling the suffocating heat in my face, seeing the flames above his 
back when I rolled under him. And then Claudia rose up out of the confusion and 
was striking at him over and over with the poker until his grip broke and I 
scrambled loose from him. I saw the poker coming down again and again on him and 
could hear the snarls rising from Claudia in time with the poker, like the 
stress of an unconscious animal. Lestat was holding his hand, his face a grimace 
of pain. And there, sprawled on the smoldering carpet, lay the other one, blood 
flowing from his head.
"What happened then is not clear to me. I think I grabbed the poker from her and 
gave him one fine blow with it to the side of the head. I remember that he 
seemed unstoppable, invulnerable to the blows. The heat, by this time, was 
singeing my clothes, had caught Claudia's gossamer gown, so that I grabbed her 
up and ran down the passage trying to stifle the flames with my body. I remember 
taking off my coat and beating at the flames in the open sir, and men rushing up 
the stairs and past me. A great crowd swelled from the passage into the 
courtyard, and someone stood on the sloped roof of the brick kitchen. I had 
Claudia in my arms now and was rushing past them all, oblivious to the 
questions, thrusting a shoulder through them, making them divide. And then I was 
free with her, hearing her pant and sob in my ear, running blindly down the Rue 
Royale, down the first narrow street, running and running until there was no 
sound but the sound of any running. And her breath. And we stood there, the man 
and the child, scorched and breathing deep in the quiet of night."
 
PART II
 
All night long I stood on the deck of the French ship Mariana, watching the 
gangplanks. The long levee was crowded, and parties lasted late in the lavish 
staterooms, the decks rumbling with passengers and guests. But finally, as the 
hours moved toward dawn, the parties were over one by one, and carriages left 
tile narrow riverfront streets. A few late passengers came aboard, a couple 
lingered for hours at the rail nearby. But Lestat and his apprentice, if they 
survived the fire (and I was convinced that they had) did not find their way to 
the ship. Our luggage had left the flat that day; and if anything had remained 
to let them know our destination, I was sure it had been destroyed. Yet still I 
watched. Claudia sat securely locked in our stateroom, her eyes fixed on the 
porthole. But Lestat did not come.
"Finally, as I'd hoped, the commotion of putting ant commenced before daylight. 
A few people waved from the pier and the grassy hump of the levee as the great 
ship began first to shiver, then to jerk violently to one side, and then to 
slide out in one great majestic motion into the current of the Mississippi.
"The lights of New Orleans grew small and dim until there appeared behind us 
only a pale phosphorescence against the lightening clouds. I was fatigued beyond 
my worst memory, yet I stood on the deck for as long as I could see that fight, 
knowing that I might never see it again. In moments we were carried downstream 
past the piers of Freniere and Pointe du Lac and then, as I could see the great 
wall of cottonwood and cypress growing green out of the darkness along the 
shore, I knew it was almost morning. Too perilously close.
"And as I put the key into the lock of the cabin I felt the greatest exhaustion 
perhaps that I'd ever known. Never in all the years I'd lived in our select 
family had I known the fear I'd experienced tonight, the vulnerability, the 
sheer terror. And there was to be no sudden relief from it. No sudden sense of 
safety. Only that relief which weariness at last imposes, when neither mind nor 
body can endure the terror any longer. For though Lestat was now miles away from 
us, he had in his resurrection awakened in me a tangle of complex fears which I 
could not escape. Even as Claudia said to me, 'We're safe, Louis, safe,' and I 
whispered the word yes to her, I could see Lestat hanging in the doorway, see 
those bulbous eyes, that scarred flesh. How had he come back, how had he 
triumphed over death? How could any creature have survived that shriveled ruin 
he'd become? Whatever the answer, what did it mean-not only for him, but for 
Claudia, for me? Safe from him we were, but safe from ourselves?
"The ship was struck by a strange 'fever.' It was amazingly clean of vermin, 
however, though occasionally their bodies might be found, weightless and dry, as 
if the creatures had been dead for days. Yet there was this fever. It struck a 
passenger first in the form of weakness and a soreness about the throat; 
occasionally there were marks there, and occasionally the marks were someplace 
else; or sometimes there were no recognizable marks at all, though an old wound 
was reopened and painful again. And sometimes the passenger who fell to sleeping 
more and more as the voyage progressed and the fever progressed died in his 
sleep. So there were burials at sea on several occasions as we crossed the 
Atlantic. Naturally afraid of fever, I shunned the passengers, did not wish to 
join them in the smoking room, get to know their stories, hear their dreams and 
expectations. I took my 'meals' alone. But Claudia liked to watch the 
passengers, to stand on deck and see them come and go in the early evening, to 
say softly to me later as I sat at the porthole, 'I think she'll fall prey . . . 
. '
"I would put the book down and look out the porthole, feeling the gentle rocking 
of the sea, seeing the stars, more clear and brilliant than they had ever been 
on land, dipping down to touch the waves. It seemed at moments, when I sat alone 
in the dark stateroom, that the sky had come down to meet the sea and that some 
great secret was to be revealed in that meeting, some great gulf miraculously 
closed forever. But who was to make this revelation when the sky and sea became 
indistinguishable and neither any longer was chaos? God? Or Satan? It struck me 
suddenly what consolation it would be to know Satan, to look upon his face, no 
matter how terrible that countenance was, to know that I belonged to him 
totally, and thus put to rest forever the torment of this ignorance. To step 
through some veil that would forever separate me from all that I called human 
nature.
"I felt the ship moving closer and closer to this secret. There was no visible 
end to the firmament; it closed about us with breathtaking beauty and silence. 
But then the words put to rest became horrible. Because there would be no rest 
in damnation, could be no rest; and what was this torment compared to the 
restless fires of hell? The sea rocking beneath those constant stars-those stars 
themselves-what had this to do with Satan? And those images which sound so 
static to us in childhood when we are all so taken up with mortal frenzy that we 
can scarce imagine them desirable: seraphim gazing forever upon the face of 
God-and the face of God itself-this was rest eternal, of which this gentle, 
cradling sea was only the faintest promise.
"But even in these moments, when the ship slept and all the world slept, neither 
heaven nor hell seemed more than a tormenting fancy. To know, to believe, in one 
or the other . . . that was perhaps the only salvation for which I could dream.
"Claudia, with Lestat's liking for light, lit the lamps when she rose. She had a 
marvelous pack of playing cards, acquired from a lady on board; the picture 
cards were in the fashion of Marie Antoinette, and the backs of the cards bore 
gold fleurs-de-lis on gleaming violet. She played a game of solitaire in which 
the cards made the numbers of a clock. And she asked me until I finally began to 
answer her, how Lestat had accomplished it. She was no longer shaken. If she 
remembered her screams in the fire she did not care to dwell on them. If she 
remembered that, before the fire, she had wept real tears in my arms, it made no 
change in her; she was, as always in the past, a person of little indecision, a 
person for whom habitual quiet did not mean anxiety or regret.
" `We should have burned him,' she said. 'We were fools to think from his 
appearance that he was dead.'
" `But how could he have survived?' I asked her. `You saw him, you know what 
became of him.' I had no taste for it, really. I would have gladly pushed it to 
the back of my mind, but my mind would not allow me to. And it was she who gave 
me the answers now, for the dialogue was really with herself. `Suppose, though, 
he had ceased to fight us,' she explained, `that he was still living, locked in 
that helpless dried corpse, conscious and calculating. . .
" `Conscious in that state!' I whispered.
" `And suppose, when he reached the swamp waters and heard the sounds of our 
carriage going away, that he had strength enough to propel those limbs to move. 
There were creatures all around him in the dark. I saw him once rip the head of 
a small garden lizard and watch the blood run down into a glass. Can you imagine 
the tenacity of the will to live in him, his hands groping in that water for 
anything that moved?'
" `The will to live? Tenacity?' I murmured. `Suppose it was something else . . . 
.'
" `And then, when he'd felt the resuscitation of his strength, just enough 
perhaps to have sustained him to the road, somewhere along that road he found 
someone. Perhaps he crouched, waiting for a passing carriage; perhaps he crept, 
gathering still what blood he could until he came to the shacks of those 
immigrants or those scattered country houses. And what a spectacle he must have 
been!' She gazed at the hanging lamp, her eyes narrow, her voice muted, without 
emotion. `And then what did he do? It's clear to me. If he could not have gotten 
back to New Orleans in time, he could most definitely have reached the Old Bayou 
cemetery. The charity hospital feeds it fresh coffins every day. And I can see 
him clawing his way through the moist earth for such a coffin, dumping the fresh 
contents out in the swamps, and securing himself until the next nightfall in 
that shallow grave where no manner of man would be wont to disturb him. Yes . . 
. that is what he did, I'm certain.'
"I thought of this for a long time, picturing it, seeing that it must have 
happened. And then I heard her add thoughtfully, as she laid down her card and 
looked at the oval face of a white-coiffed king, `I could have done it.
" `And why do you look that way at me?' she asked, gathering up her cards, her 
small fingers struggling to make a neat pack of them and then to shuffle them.
" `But you do believe . . . that had we burned his remains he would have died?' 
I asked.
" `Of course I believe it. If there is nothing to rise, there is nothing to 
rise. What are you driving at?' She was dealing out the cards now, dealing a 
hand for me on the small oak table. I looked at the cards, but I did not touch 
them.
" `I don't know . . : I whispered to her. `Only that perhaps there was no will 
to live, no tenacity . . . because very simply there was no need of either.'
"Her eyes gazed at me steadily, giving no hint of her thoughts or that she 
understood mine.
" `Because perhaps he was incapable of dying . . . perhaps he is, and we are . . 
. truly immortal?'
"For a longtime she sat there looking at me.
" `Consciousness in that state . . : I finally added, as I looked away from her. 
`If it were so, then mightn't there be consciousness in any other? Fire, 
sunlight . . . what does it matter?'
" `Louis,' she said, her voice soft. `You're afraid. You don't stand en garde 
against fear. You don't understand the danger of fear itself. We'll know these 
answers when we find those who can tell us, those who've possessed knowledge for 
centuries, for however long creatures such as ourselves have walked the earth. 
That knowledge was our birthright, and he deprived us. He earned his death.'
" 'But he didn't die . . .' I said.
" `He's dead,' she said. `No one could have escaped that house unless they'd run 
with us, at our very side. No. He's dead, and so is that trembling aesthete, his 
friend. Consciousness, what does it matter?'
"She gathered up the cards and put them aside, gesturing for me to hand her the 
books from the table beside the bunk, those books which she'd unpacked 
immediately on board, the few select records of vampire lore which she'd taken 
to be her guides. They included no wild romances from England, no stories of 
Edgar Allan Poe, no fancy. Only those few accounts of the vampires of eastern 
Europe, which had become for her a sort of Bible. In those countries indeed they 
did burn the remains of the vampire when they found him, and the heart was 
staked and the head severed. She would read these now for hours, these ancient 
books which had been read and reread before they ever found their way across the 
Atlantic; they were travelers' tales, the accounts of priests and scholars. And 
she would plan our trip, not with the need of any pen or paper, only in her 
mind. A trip that would take us at once away from the glittering capitals of 
Europe towards the Black Sea, where we would dock at Varna and begin that search 
in the rural countryside of the Carpathians.
"For me it was a grim prospect, bound as I was to it, for there were longings in 
me for other places and other knowledge which Claudia did not begin to 
comprehend. Seeds of these longings had been planted in me years ago, seeds 
which came to bitter flower as our ship passed through the Straits of Gibraltar 
and into the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
"I wanted those waters to be blue. And they were not. They were the nighttime 
waters, and how I suffered then, straining to remember the seas that a young 
man's untutored senses had taken for granted, that an undisciplined memory had 
let slip away for eternity. The Mediterranean was black, black off the coast of 
Italy, black off the coast of Greece, black always, black when in the small cold 
hours before dawn, as even Claudia slept, weary of her books and the meager fare 
that caution allowed her vampire hunger, I lowered a lantern down, down through 
the rising vapor until the fire blazed right over the lapping waters; and 
nothing came to light on that heaving surface but the light itself, the 
reflection of that beam traveling constant with me, a steady eye which seemed to 
fix on me from the depths and say, `Louis, your quest is for darkness only. This 
sea is not your sea. The myths of men are not your myths. Men's treasures are 
not yours.'
"But oh, how the quest for the Old World vampires filled me with bitterness in 
those moments, a bitterness I could all but taste, as if the very air had lost 
its freshness. For what secrets, what truths had those monstrous creatures of 
night to give us? What, of necessity, must be their terrible limits, if indeed 
we were to find them at all? What can the damned really say to the damned?
"I never stepped ashore at Piraeus. Yet in my mind I roamed the Acropolis at 
Athens, watching the moon rise through the open roof of the Parthenon, measuring 
my height by the grandeur of those columns, walking the streets of those Greeks 
who died at Marathon, listening to the sound of wind in the ancient olives. 
These were the monuments of men who could not die, not the stones of the living 
dead; here the secrets that had endured the passage of time, which I had only 
dimly begun to understand. And yet nothing turned me from our quest and nothing 
could. turn me, but over and over, committed as I was, I pondered the great risk 
of our questions, the risk of any question that is truthfully asked; for the 
answer must carry an incalculable price, a tragic danger. Who knew that better 
than I, who had presided over the death of my own body, seeing all I called 
human wither and die only to form an unbreakable chain which held me fast to 
this world yet made me forever its exile, a specter with a beating heart?
"The sea lulled me to bad dreams, to sharp remembrances. A winter night in New 
Orleans when I wandered through the St. Louis cemetery and saw my sister, old 
and bent, a bouquet of white roses in her arms, the thorns carefully bound in an 
old parchment, her gray head bowed, her steps carrying her steadily along 
through the perilous dark to the grave where the stone of her brother Louis was 
set, side by side with that of his younger brother. . Louis, who had died in the 
fire of Pointe du Lac leaving a generous legacy to a godchild and namesake she 
never knew. Those flowers were for Louis, as if it had not been half a century 
since his death, as if her memory, like Louis's memory, left her no peace. 
Sorrow sharpened her ashen beauty, sorrow bent her narrow back. And what I would 
not have given, as I watched her, to touch her silver hair, to whisper love to 
her, if love would not have loosed on her remaining years a horror worse than 
grief. I left her with grief. Over and over and over.
 "And I dreamed now too much. I dreamed too long, in the prison of this ship, in 
the prison of my body, attuned as 
it was to the rise of every sun as no mortal body had ever been. And my heart 
beat faster for the mountains of 
eastern Europe, finally, beat faster for the one hope that somewhere we might 
find in that primitive countryside 
the answer to why under God this suffering was allowed to exist why under God it 
was allowed to begin, and how 
under God it might be ended. I had not the courage to end it, I knew, without 
that answer. And in time the waters 
of the Mediterranean became, in fact, the waters of the Black Sea"
 
The vampire sighed. The boy was resting on his elbow, his face cradled in his 
right palm; and his avid expression was incongruous with the redness of his 
eyes.
"Do you think I'm playing with you?" the vampire asked, his fine dark eyebrows 
knitted for an instant.
"No," the boy said quickly. "I know better than to ask you any more questions. 
You'll tell me everything in your own time." And his mouth settled, and he 
looked at the vampire as though he were ready for him to begin again.
There was a sound then from far off. It came from somewhere in the old Victorian 
building around them, the first such sound they'd heard. The boy looked up 
towards the hallway door. It was as if he'd forgotten the building existed. 
Someone walked heavily on the old boards. But the vampire was undisturbed. He 
looked away as if he were again disengaging himself from the present.
"That village. I can't tell you the name of it; the name's gone. I remember it 
was miles from the coast, however, and we'd been traveling alone by carriage. 
And such a carriage! It was Claudia's doing, that carriage, and I should have 
expected it; but then, things are always taking me unawares. From the first 
moment we. arrived in Varna, I had perceived certain changes in her which made 
me at once aware she was Lestat's daughter as well as my own. From me she had 
learned the value of money, but from Lestat she had inherited a passion for 
spending it; and she wasn't to leave without the most luxurious black coach we 
could manage, outfitted with leather seats that might have accommodated a band 
of travelers, let alone a man and a child who used the magnificent compartment 
only for the transportation of an ornately carved oak chest. To the back were 
strapped two trunks of the finest clothes the shops there could provide; and we 
went speeding along, those light enormous wheels and fine springs carrying that 
bulk with a frightening ease over the mountain roads. There was a thrill to that 
when there was nothing else in this strange country, those horses at a gallop 
and the gentle listing of that carriage.
"And it was strange country. Lonely, dark, as rural country is. always dark, its 
castles and ruins often obscured when the moon passed behind the clouds, so that 
I felt an anxiety during those hours I'd never quite experienced in New Orleans. 
And the people themselves were no relief. We were naked and lost in their tiny 
hamlets, and conscious always that amongst them we were in grave danger.
"Never in New Orleans had the kill to be disguised. The ravages of fever, 
plague, crime--these things competed with us always there, and outdid us. But 
here we had to go to great lengths to make the kill unnoticed. Because these 
simple country people, who might have found the crowded streets of New Orleans 
terrifying, believed completely that the dead did walk and did drink the blood 
of the living. They knew our names: vampire, devil. And we, who were on the 
lookout for the slightest rumor, wanted under no circumstances to create rumor 
ourselves.
"We traveled alone and fast and lavishly amongst them, struggling to be safe 
within our ostentation, finding talk of vampires all too cheap by the inn fires, 
where, my daughter sleeping peacefully against my chest, I invariably found 
someone amongst the peasants or guests who spoke enough German or, at times, 
even French to discuss with me the familiar legends.
"But finally we came to that village which was to be the turning point in our 
travels. I savor nothing about that journey, not the freshness of the air, the 
coolness of the nights. I don't talk of it without a vague tremor even now.
"We had been at a farmhouse the night before, and so no news prepared us---only 
the desolate appearance of the place: because it wasn't late when we reached it, 
not late enough for all the shutters of the little street to be bolted or for a 
darkened lantern to be swinging from the broad archway of the inn.
"Refuse was collected in the doorways. And there were other signs that something 
was wrong. A small box of withered flowers beneath a shuttered shop window. A 
barrel rolling back and forth in the center of the inn yard. The place had the 
aspect of a town under siege by the plague.
"But even as I was setting Claudia down on the packed earth beside the carriage, 
I saw the crack of light beneath the inn door. 'Put the hood of your cape up,' 
she said quickly. 'They're coming.' Someone inside was pulling back the latch.
"At first all I saw was the light behind the figure in the very narrow margin 
she allowed. Then the light from the carriage lanterns glinted in her eye.
"'A room for the night!' I said in German. 'And my horses need tending, badly!'
"'The night's no time for traveling . . .' she said to me in a peculiar, flat 
voice. 'And with a child.' As she said this, I noticed others in the room behind 
her. I could hear their murmurings and see the flickering of a fire. From what I 
could see there were mostly peasants gathered around it, except for one man who 
was dressed much like myself in a tailored coat, with an overcoat over his 
shoulders; but his clothes were neglected and shabby. His red hair gleamed in 
the firelight. He was a foreigner, like ourselves, and he was the only one not 
looking at us. His head wagged slightly as if he were drunk.
"'My daughter's tired,' I said to the woman. 'we've no place to stay but here' 
And now I took Claudia into my arms. She turned her face towards me, and I heard 
her whisper, 'Louis, the garlic, the crucifix above the doom'
"I had not seen these things. It was a small crucifix, with the body of Christ 
in bronze fixed to the wood, and the garlic was wreathed around it, a fresh 
garland entwined with an old one, in which the buds were withered and dried. The 
woman's eye followed my eyes, and then she looked at me sharply and I could see 
how exhausted she was, how red were her pupils, and how the hand which clutched 
at the shawl at her breast trembled. Her black hair was completely disheveled. I 
pressed nearer until I was almost at the threshold, and she opened the door wide 
suddenly as if she'd only just decided to let us in. She said a prayer as I 
passed her, I was sure of it, though I couldn't understand the Slavic words.
"The small, low-beamed room was filled with people, men and women along the 
rough, paneled walls, on benches and even on the floor. It was as if the entire 
village were gathered there. A child slept in a woman's lap and another slept on 
the staircase, bundled in blankets, his knees tucked in against one step, his 
arms making a pillow for his head on the next. And everywhere there was the 
garlic hanging from nails and hooks, along with the cooking pots and flagons. 
The fire was the only light, and it threw distorting shadows on the still faces 
as they watched us.
"No one motioned for us to sit or offered us anything, and finally the woman 
told me in German I might take the horses into the stable if I liked. She was 
staring at me with those slightly wild, red-rimmed eyes, and then her face 
softened. She told me she'd stand at the inn door for me with a lantern, but I 
must hurry and leave the child here.
"But something else had distracted me, a scent I detected beneath the heavy 
fragrance of burning wood and the wine. It was the scent of death. I could feel 
Claudia's hand press my chest, and I saw her tiny finger pointing to a door at 
the foot of the stairs. The scent came from there.
"The woman had a cup of wine waiting when I returned, and a bowl of broth. I sat 
down, Claudia on my knee, her head turned away from the fire towards that 
mysterious door. All eyes were fixed on us as before, except for the foreigner. 
I could see his profile now clearly. He was much younger than I'd thought, his 
haggard appearance stemming from emotion. He had a lean but very pleasant face 
actually, his light, freckled skin making him seem like a boy. His wide, blue 
eyes were fixed on the fire as though he were talking to it, and his eyelashes 
and eyebrows were golden in the light, which gave him a very innocent, open 
expression. But he was miserable, disturbed, drunk. Suddenly he turned to me, 
and I saw he'd been crying. `Do you speak English?' he said, his voice booming 
in the silence.
" `Yes, I do,' I said to him. And he glanced at the others, triumphantly. They 
stared at him stonily.
" `You speak English!' he cried, his lips stretching into a bitter smile, his 
eyes moving around the ceiling and then fixing on mine. `Get out of this 
country,' he said. `Get out of it now. Tales your carriage, your horses, drive 
them till they drop, but get out of it!' Then his shoulders convulsed as if he 
were sick. He put his hand to his mouth. The woman who stood against the wall 
now, her arms folded over her soiled apron, said calmly in German, `At dawn you 
can go. At dawn.'
" `But what is it?' I whispered to her; and then I looked to him. He was 
watching me, his eyes glassy and red. No one spoke. A log fell heavily in the 
fire.
" `Won't you tell me?' I asked the Englishman gently. He stood up. For a moment 
I thought he was going to fall. He loomed over me, a much taller man than 
myself, his head pitching forward, then backward, before he righted himself and 
put his hands on the edge of the table. His black coat was stained with wine, 
and so was his shirt cuff. `You want to see?' he gasped as he peered into my 
eyes. `Do you want to see for yourself?' There was a soft, pathetic tone to his 
voice as he spoke these words.
" 'Leave the child!' said the woman abruptly, with a quick, imperious gesture.
" `She's sleeping,' I said. And, rising, I followed the Englishman to the door 
at the foot of the stairs.
"There was a slight commotion as those nearest the door moved away from it. And 
we entered a small parlor together.
"Only one candle burned on the sideboard, and the first thing I saw was a row of 
delicately painted plates on a shelf. There were curtains on the small ,window, 
and a gleaming picture of the Virgin Mary and Christ child on the wall. But the 
walls and chairs barely enclosed a great oak table, and on that table lay the 
body of a young woman, her white hands folded on her breast, her auburn hair 
mussed and tucked about her thin, white throat and under her shoulders. Her 
pretty face was already hard with death. Amber rosary beads gleamed around her 
wrist and down the side of her dark wool skirt. And beside her lay a very pretty 
red felt hat with a wide, soft brim and a 'veil, and a pair of dark gloves. It 
was all laid there as if she would very soon rise and put these things on. And 
the Englishman patted the hat carefully now as he drew close to her. He was on 
the verge of breaking down altogether. He'd drawn a large handkerchief out of 
his coat, and he had put it to his face. `Do you know what they want to do with 
her?' he whispered as he looked at me. `Do you have any idea?'
"The woman came in behind us and reached for his arm, but he roughly shook her 
off. `Do you know?' he demanded of me with his eyes fierce. `Savages!'
" `You stop now! she said under her breath.
"He clenched his teeth and shook his head, so that a shock of his red hair 
loosened in his eyes. `You get away from me,' he said to the woman in German. 
`Get away from me.' Someone was whispering in the other room. The Englishman 
looked again at the young woman, and his eyes filled with tears. `So innocent,' 
he said softly; and then he glanced at the ceiling and, making a fist with his 
right hand, he gasped, `Damn you . . . God! Damn you!'
" `Lord,' the woman whispered, and quickly she made the Sign of the Cross.
" `Do you see this?' he asked me. And he pried very carefully at the lace of the 
dead woman's throat, as though he could not, did not wish to actually touch the 
hardening flesh. Thereon her throat, unmistakable, were the two puncture wounds, 
as I'd seen them a thousand times upon a thousand, engraved in the yellowing 
skin. The man drew his hands up to his face, his tall, lean body rocking on the 
balls of his feet. `I think I'm going mad!' he said.
" `Come now,' said the woman, holding onto him as he struggled, her face 
suddenly flushed.
" 'Let him be,' I said to her. 'Just let him be. I'll take care of him.'
"Her mouth contorted. `I'll throw you all out of here, out into that dark, if 
you don't stop.' She was too weary for this, too close to some breaking point 
herself. But then she turned her back on us, drawing her shawl tight around her, 
and padded softly out, the men who'd gathered at the door making way for her.
"The Englishman was crying.
"I could see what I must do, but it wasn't only that I wanted so much to learn 
from him, my heart pounding with silent excitement. It was heartrending to see 
him this way. Fate brought me too mercilessly close to him.
" `I'll stay with you,' I offered. And I brought two chairs up beside the table. 
He sat down heavily, his eyes on the flickering candle at his side. I shut the 
door, and the walls seemed to recede and the circle of the candle to grow 
brighter around his bowed head. He leaned back against the sideboard and wiped 
his face with his handkerchief. Then he drew a leatherbound flask from his 
pocket and offered it to me, and I said no.
" `Do you want to tell me what happened?'
"He nodded. " `Perhaps you can bring some sanity to this place,' he said. 
`You're a Frenchman, aren't you? You know, I'm English.'
" `Yes,' I nodded.
"And then, pressing my hand fervently, the liquor so dulling his senses that he 
never felt the coldness of it, he told me his name was Morgan and he needed me 
desperately, more than he'd ever needed anyone in his life. And at that moment, 
holding that hand, feeling the fever of it, I did a strange thing. I told him my 
name, which I confided to almost no one. But he was looking at the dead woman as 
if he hadn't heard me, his lips forming what appeared to be the faintest smile, 
the tears standing in his eyes. His expression would have moved any human being; 
it might have been more than some could bear.
" `I did this,' he said, nodding. `I brought her here.' And he raised his 
eyebrows as if wondering at it.
" `No,' I said quickly. `You didn't do it. Tell me who did.'
"But then he seemed confused, lost in thought. 'I'd never been out of England,' 
he started. `I was painting, you see . . . as if it mattered now . . . the 
paintings, the book! I thought it all so quaint! So picturesque!' His eyes moved 
over the room, his voice trailing off. For a long time he looked at her again, 
and then softly he said to her, `Emily,' and I felt I'd glimpsed something 
precious he held to his heart.
"Gradually, then, the story began to come. A honeymoon journey, through Germany, 
into this country, wherever the regular coaches would carry them, wherever 
Morgan found scenes to paint. And they'd come to this remote place finally 
because there was a ruined monastery nearby which was said to be a very well 
reserved place.
"But Morgan and Emily had never reached that monastery. Tragedy had been waiting 
for them here.
"It turned out the regular coaches did not come this way, and Morgan had paid a 
farmer to bring them by cart. But the afternoon they arrived, there was a great 
commotion in the cemetery outside of town. The farmer, taking one look, refused 
to leave his cart to see further.
" `It was some kind of procession, it seemed,' Morgan said, `with all the people 
outfitted in their best, and some with flowers; and the truth was I thought it 
quite fascinating. I wanted to see it. I was so eager I had the fellow leave us, 
bags and all. We could see the village just up ahead. Actually it was I more 
than Emily, of course, but she was so agreeable, you see. I left her, finally, 
seated on our suitcases, and I went on up the hill without her. Did you see it 
when you were coming, the cemetery? No, of course you didn't. Thank God that 
carriage of yours brought you here safe and sound. Though, if you'd driven on, 
no matter how bad off your horses were . . ' He stopped.
" `What's the danger?' I urged him, gently.
" 'Ah . . . danger! Barbarians!' he murmured. And he glanced at the door. Then 
he took another drink from his flask and capped it.
" Well, it was no procession. I saw that right off,' he said. `The people 
wouldn't even speak to me when I came up-you know what they are; but they had no 
objection to letting me watch. The truth was, you wouldn't have thought I was 
standing there at all. You won't believe me when I tell you what I saw, but you 
must believe me; because if you don't, I'm mad, I know it.'
" `I will believe you, go on,' I said.
" `Well, the cemetery was full of fresh graves, I saw that at once, some of them 
with new wooden crosses and some of them just mounds of earth with flowers still 
fresh; and the peasants there, they were holding flowers, a few of them, as 
though they meant to be trimming these graves; but all of them were standing 
stock-still, their eyes on these two fellows who had a white horse by the 
bridle-and what an animal that was! It was pawing and stomping and shying to one 
side, as if it wanted no part of the place; a beautiful thing it was, though, a 
splendid animal-a stallion, and pure white. Well, at some point-and I couldn't 
tell you how they agreed upon it, because not a one of them said a word-one 
fellow, the leader, I think, gave the horse a tremendous whack with the handle 
of a shovel,, and it took off up the hill, just wild. You can imagine, I thought 
that was the last we'd see of that horse for a while for sure. But I was wrong. 
In a minute it had slowed to a gallop, and it was turning around amongst the old 
graves and coming back down the hill towards the newer ones. And the people all 
stood there watching it. No one made a sound. And here it came trotting right 
over the mounds, right through the flowers, and no one made a move to get hold 
of the bridle. And then suddenly it came to a stop, right on one of the graves'
"He wiped at his eyes, but the tears were almost gone. He seemed fascinated with 
his tale, as I was.
" `Well, here's what happened,' he continued. `The animal just stood there. And 
suddenly a cry went up from the crowd. No, it wasn't a cry, it was as though 
they were all gasping and moaning, and then everything went quiet. And the horse 
was just standing there, tossing its head; and finally this fellow who was the 
leader burst forward and shouted to several of the others; and one of the 
women-she screamed, and threw herself on the grave almost under the horse's 
hooves. I came up then as close as I could. I could see the stone with the 
deceased's name on it; it was a young woman, dead only six months, the dates 
carved right there, and there was this miserable woman on her knees in the dirt, 
with her arms around the stone now, as if she meant to pull it right up out of 
the earth. And these fellows trying to pick her up and get her away.
" `Now I almost turned back, but I couldn't, not until I saw what they meant to 
do. And, of course, Emily was quite safe, and none of these people took the 
slightest notice of either of us. Well, two of them finally did have that woman 
up, and then the other had come with shovels and had begun to dig right into the 
grave. Pretty soon one of them was down in the grave, and everyone was so still 
you could hear the slightest sound, that shovel digging in there and the earth 
thrown up in a heap. I can't tell you what it was like. Here was the sun high 
above us and not a cloud in the sky, and all of them standing around, holding 
onto one another now, and even that pathetic woman . . .' He stopped now, 
because his eyes had fallen on Emily. I just sat there waiting for him. I could 
hear the whiskey when he lifted the flask again, and I felt glad for him that 
there was so much there, that he could drink it and deaden this pain. `It might 
as well have been midnight on that hill,' he said, looking at me, his voice very 
low. `That's how it felt. And then I could hear this fellow in the grave. He was 
cracking the coffin lid with his shovel! Then out came the broken boards. He was 
just tossing them out, right and left. And suddenly he let out an awful cry. The 
other fellows drew up close, and all at once there was a rush to the grave; and 
then they all fell back like a wave, all of them crying out, and some of them 
turning and trying to push away. And the poor woman, she was wild, bending her 
knees, and trying to get free of those men that were holding onto her. Well, I 
couldn't help but go up. I don't suppose anything could have kept me away; and 
I'll tell you that's the first time I've ever done such a thing, and, God help 
me, it's to be the last. Now, you must believe me, you must! But there, right 
there in that coffin, with that fellow standing on the broken boards over her 
feet, was the dead woman, and I tell you . . . I tell you she was as fresh, as 
pink =his voice cracked, and he sat there, his eyes wide, his hand poised as if 
he held something invisible in his fingers, pleading with me to believe him-`as 
pink as if she were alive! Buried six months! And there she lay! The shroud was 
thrown back off her, and her hands lay on her breast just as if she were 
asleep.'
"He sighed. His hand dropped to his leg and he shook his head, and for a moment 
he just sat staring. `I swear to you!' he said. `And then this fellow who was in 
the grave, he bent down and lifted the dead woman's hand. I tell you that arm 
moved as freely as my arm! And he held her hand out as if he were looking at her 
nails. Then he shouted; and that woman beside the grave, she was kicking at 
those fellows and shoving at the earth with her foot, so it fell right down in 
the corpse's face and hair. And oh, she was so pretty, that dead woman; oh, if 
you could have seen her, and what they did then!'
" `Tell me what they did,' I said to him softly. But I knew before he said it.
" `I tell you . . .' he said. `We don't know the meaning of something like that 
until we see it!' And he looked at me, his eyebrow arched as if he were 
confiding a terrible secret. `We just don't know.'
" `No, we don't,' I said.
" `I'll tell you. They took a stake, a wooden stake, mind you; and this one in 
the grave, he took -the stake with a hammer and he put it right to her breast. I 
didn't believe it! And then with one great blow he drove it right into her. I 
tell you, I couldn't have moved even if I'd wanted to; I was rooted there. And 
then that fellow, that beastly fellow, he reached up for his shovel and with 
both his arms he drove it sharp, right into the dead woman's throat. The head 
was off like that' He shut his eyes, his face contorted, and put his head to the 
side.
"I looked at him, but I wasn't seeing him at all. I was seeing this woman in her 
grave with the head severed, and I was feeling the most keen revulsion inside 
myself, as if a hand were pressing on my throat and my insides were coming up 
inside me and I couldn't breathe. Then I felt Claudia's lip against my wrist She 
was staring at Morgan, and apparently she had been for some time.
"Slowly Morgan looked up at me, his eyes wild. `It's what they want to do with 
her,' he said. `With Emily! Well I won't let them.' He shook his head adamantly. 
`I won't let them. You've got to help me, Louis.' His lips were trembling, and 
his face so distorted now by his sudden desperation that I might have recoiled 
from it despite myself. `The same blood flows in our veins, you and I. I mean, 
French, English, we're civilized men, Louis. They're savages!'
"`Try to be calm now, Morgan,' I said, reaching out for him. `I want you to tell 
me what happened then. You and Emily. '
"He was struggling for his bottle. I drew it out of his pocket, and he took off 
the cap. `That's a fellow, Louis; that's a friend,' he said emphatically. `You 
see, I took her away fast. They were going to burn that corpse right there in 
the cemetery; and Emily was not to see that, not while I . . .' He shook his 
head `There wasn't a carriage to be found that would take us out of here; not a 
single one of them would leave now for the two days' drive to get us to a decent 
place!'
" `But how did they explain it to you, Morgan?' insisted. I could see he did not 
have much time left.
" `Vampires!' he burst out, the whiskey sloshing on his hand. `Vampires, Louis. 
Can you believe that!' And he gestured to the door with the bottle. 'A plague of 
vampires! All this in whispers, as if the devil himself were listening at the 
door! Of course, God have mercy, they put a stop to it. That unfortunate woman 
in the cemetery, they'd stopped her from clawing her way up nightly to feed on 
the rest of us!' He put the bottle to his lips. `Oh . . . God . . .' he moaned.
"I watched him drink, patiently waiting.
" `And Emily . . : he continued. `She thought it fascinating. What with the fire 
out there and a decent dinner and a proper glass of wine. She hadn't seen that 
woman! She hadn't seen what they'd done,' he said desperately. `Oh, I wanted to 
get out of here; I offered them money. "If it's over," I kept saying to them, 
"one of you ought to want this money, a small fortune just to drive us out of 
here."'
" But it wasn't over . . ' I whispered.
"And I could see the tears gathering in his eyes, his mouth twisting with pain.
" `How did it happen to her?' I asked him.
" `I don't know,' he gasped, shaking his head, the flask pressed to his forehead 
as if it were something cool, refreshing, when it was not.
" `It came into the inn?'
" `They said she went out to it,' he confessed, the tears coursing down his 
cheeks. `Everything was locked! They saw to that. Doors, windows! Then it was 
morning and they were all shouting, and she was gone. The window stood wide 
open, and she wasn't there. I didn't even take time for my robe. I was running. 
I came to a dead halt over her, out there, behind the inn. My foot all but came 
down on her . . . she was just lying there under the peach trees. She held an 
empty cup. Clinging to it, an empty cup! They said it lured her . . . she was 
trying to give it water. . .
"The flask slipped from his hands. He clapped his hands over his ears, his body 
bent, his head bowed.
"For a long time I sat there watching him; I had no words to say to him. And 
when he cried softly that they wanted to desecrate her, that they said she, 
Emily, was now a vampire, I assured him softly, though I don't think he ever 
heard me, that she was not.
"He moved forward finally, as if he might fall. He appeared to be reaching for 
the candle, and before his arm rested on the buffet, his finger touched it so 
the hot wax extinguished the tiny bit that was left of the wick. We were in 
darkness then, and his head had fallen on his arm.
"All of the light of the room seemed gathered now in Claudia's eyes. But as the 
silence lengthened and I sat there, wondering, hoping Morgan wouldn't lift his 
head again, the woman came to the door. Her candle illuminated him, drunk, 
asleep.
" `You go now,' she said to me. Dark figures crowded around her, and the old 
wooden inn was alive with the shuffling of men and women. `Go by the fire!'
" `What are you going to do!' I demanded of her, rising and holding Claudia. `I 
want to know what you propose to do!'
" `Go by the fire,' she commanded.
"'No, don't do this,' I said. But she narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth. 
`You go!' she growled.
" `Morgan,' I said to him; but he didn't hear me, he couldn't hear me.
" `Leave him be,' said the woman fiercely.
" `But it's stupid, what you're doing; don't you understand? This woman's dead!' 
I pleaded with her.
" `Louis,' Claudia whispered, so that they couldn't hear her, her arm tightening 
around my neck beneath the fur of my hood. `Let these people alone.'
"The others were moving into the room now, encircling the table, their faces 
grim as they looked at us.
" `But where do these vampires come from!' I whispered. `You've searched your 
cemetery! If it's vampires, where do they hide from you? This woman can't do you 
harm. Hunt your vampires if you must'
" `By day,' she said gravely, winking her eye and slowly nodding her head. `By 
day. We get them, by day-.'
" `Where, out there in the graveyard, digging up the graves of your own 
villagers?'
"She shook her head. `The ruins,' she said. `It was always the ruins. We were 
wrong. In my grandfather's time it was the ruins, and it is the ruins again. 
We'll take them down stone by stone if we have to. But you . . . you go now. 
Because if you don't go, we'll drive you out there into that dark now!'
"And then out from behind her apron she drew her clenched fist with the stake in 
it and held it up in the flickering light of the candle. `You hear me, you go!' 
she said; and the men pressed in close behind her, their mouths set, their eyes 
blazing in the light.
" `Yes . . : I said to her. `Out there. I would prefer that. Out there.' And I 
swept past her, almost throwing her aside, seeing them scuttle back to make way. 
I had my hand on the latch of the inn door and slid it back with one quick 
gesture.
" `No!' cried the woman in her guttural German. `You're mad!' And she rushed up 
to me and then stared at the latch, dumbfounded. She threw her hands up against 
the rough boards of the door. `Do you know what you do!'
" `Where are the ruins?' I asked her calmly. `How far? Do they lie to the left 
of the road, or to the right?'
" `No, no' She shook her head violently. I pried the door back and felt the cold 
blast of sir on my face. One of the women said something sharp and angry from 
the wall, and one of the children moaned in its sleep. 'I'm going. I want one 
thing from you. Tell me where the ruins lie, so I may stay clear of them. Tell 
me.'
" 'You don't know, you don't know,' she said; and then I laid my hand on her 
warm wrist and drew her slowly through the door, her feet scraping on the 
boards, her eyes wild. The men moved nearer but, as she stepped out against her 
will into the night, they stopped. She tossed her head, her hair falling down 
into her eyes, her eyes glaring at my hand and at my face. `Tell me . . ' I 
said.
"I could see she was staring not at me but at Claudia. Claudia had turned 
towards her, and the light from the fire was on her face. The woman did not see 
the rounded cheeks nor the pursed lips, I knew, but Claudia's eyes, which were 
gazing at her with a dark, demonic intelligence. The woman's teeth bit down into 
the flesh of her lip.
" `To the north or south?'
" To the north.. . ' she whispered.
" `To the left or the right?'
" `The left.'
" `And how far?'
"Her hand struggled desperately. `Three miles,' she gasped. And I released her, 
so that she fell back against the door, her eyes wide with fear and confusion. I 
had turned to go, but suddenly behind me she cried out for me to wait. I turned 
to see she'd ripped the crucifix from the beam over her head, and she had it 
thrust out towards me now. And out of the dark nightmare landscape of my memory 
I saw Babette gazing at me as she had so many years ago, saying those words, 
`Get thee behind me, Satan.' But the woman's face was desperate. `Take it, 
please, in the name of God,' she said. `And ride fast' And the door shut, 
leaving Claudia and me in total darkness."
"In minutes the tunnel of the night closed upon the weak lanterns of our 
carriage, as if the village had never existed. We lurched forward, around a 
bend, the springs creaking, the dim moon revealing for an instant the pale 
outline of the mountains beyond the pines. I could not stop thinking of Morgan, 
stop hearing his voice. It was all tangled with my own horrified anticipation of 
meeting the thing which had killed Emily, the thing which was unquestionably one 
of our own. But Claudia was in a frenzy. If she could have driven the horses 
herself, she would have taken the reins. Again and again she urged me to use the 
whip. She struck savagely at the few low branches that dipped suddenly into the 
lamps before our faces; and the arm that clung to my waist on the rocking bench 
was as firm as iron.
"I remember the road turning sharply, the lanterns clattering, and Claudia 
calling out over the wind: `There, Louis, do you see it?' And I jerked hard on 
the reins.
"She was on her knees, pressed against me, and the carnage was swaying like a 
ship at sea.
"A great fleecy cloud had released the moon, and high above us loomed the dark 
outline of the tower. One long window showed the pale sky beyond it. I sat 
there, clutching the bench, trying to steady a motion that continued in my head 
as the carriage settled on its springs. One of the horses whinnied. Then 
everything was still.
"Claudia was saying, `Louis, come ....'
"I whispered something, a swift irrational negation. I had the distinct and 
terrifying impression that Morgan was near to me, talking to me in that low, 
impassioned way he'd pleaded with me in the inn. Not a living creature stirred 
in the night around us. There was only the wind and the soft rustling of the 
leaves.
" `Do you think he knows we're coming?' I asked, my voice unfamiliar to me over 
this wind. I was in that little parlor, as if there were no escape from it, as 
if this dense forest were not real. I think I shuddered. And then I felt 
Claudia's hand very gently touch the hand I- lifted to my eyes. The thin pines 
were billowing behind her and the rustle of the leaves grew louder, as if a 
great mouth sucked the breeze and began a whirlwind. `They'll bury her at the 
crossroads? Is that what they'll do? An Englishwoman!' I whispered.
" `Would that I had your size . . ' Claudia was saying. `And would that you had 
my heart. Oh, Louis. . .'
And her head inclined to me now, so like the attitude of the vampire bending to 
kiss that I shrank back from her; but her lips only gently pressed my own, 
finding a part there to suck the breath and let it flow back into me as my arms 
enclosed her. `Let me lead you . . ' she pleaded. `There's no turning back now. 
Take me in your arms,' she said, `and let me down, on the road'
"But it seemed an eternity that I just sat there feeling her lips on my face and 
on my eyelids. Then she moved, the softness of her small body suddenly snatched 
from me, in a movement so graceful and swift that she seemed now poised in the 
air beside the carriage, her hand clutching mine for an instant, then letting it 
go. And then I looked down to see her looking up at me, standing on the road in 
the shuddering pool of light beneath the lantern. She beckoned to me, as she 
stepped backwards, one small boot behind the other. `Louis, come down . . ' 
until she threatened to vanish into the darkness. And in a second I'd unfastened 
the lamp from its hook, and I stood beside her in the tall grass.
" `Don't you sense the danger?' I whispered to her. `Can't you breathe it like 
the air?' One of those quick, elusive smiles played on her lips, as she turned 
towards the slope. The lantern pitched a pathway through the rising forest. One 
small, white hand drew the wool of her cape close, and she moved forward.
" `Wait only for a moment. . .'
" `Fear's your enemy. . .' she answered, but she did not stop.
"She proceeded ahead of the light, feet sure, even as the tall grass gave way 
gradually to low heaps of rubble, and the forest thickened, and the distant 
tower vanished with the fading of the moon and the great weaving of the branches 
overhead. Soon the sound and scent of the horses died on the low wind. 'Be en 
garde,' Claudia whispered, as she moved, relentlessly, pausing only now and 
again where the tangled vines and rock made it seem for moments there was a 
shelter. But the ruins were ancient. Whether plague or fire or a foreign enemy 
had ravaged the town, we couldn't know. Only the monastery truly remained.
"Now something whispered in the dark that was like the wind and the leaves, but 
it was neither. I saw Claudia's back straighten, saw the flash of her white palm 
as she slowed her step. Then I knew it was water, winding its way slowly down 
the mountain, and I saw it far ahead through the black trunks, a straight, 
moonlit waterfall descending to a boiling pool below. Claudia emerged 
silhouetted against the fall, her hand clutching a bare root in the moist earth 
beside it; and now I saw her climbing hand over hand up the overgrown cliff, her 
arm trembling ever so slightly, her small boots dangling, then digging in to 
hold, then swinging free again. The water was cold, and it made the air fragrant 
and light all around it, so that for a moment I rested. Nothing stirred around 
me in the forest. I listened, senses quietly separating the tune of the leaves, 
but nothing else stirred. And then it struck me gradually, like a chill coming 
over my arms and my throat and finally my face, that the night was too desolate, 
too lifeless. It was as if even the birds had shunned this place, as well as all 
the myriad creatures that should have been moving about the banks of this 
stream. But Claudia, above me on the ledge, was reaching for the lantern, her 
cape brushing my face. I lifted it, so that suddenly she sprang into light, like 
an eerie cherub. She put her hand out for me as if, despite her small size, she 
could help me up the embankment. In a moment we were moving on again, over the 
stream, up the mountain. `Do you sense it?' I whispered. `It's too still.'
"But her hand tightened on mine, as if to say, `Quiet.' The hill was growing 
steeper, and the quiet was unnerving. I tried to stare at the limits of the 
light, to see each new bark as it loomed before us. Something did move, and I 
reached for Claudia, almost pulling her sharply near to me. But it was only a 
reptile, shooting through the leaves with a whip of his tail. The leaves 
settled. But Claudia moved back against me, under the folds of my cape, a hand 
firmly clasping the cloth of my coat; and she seemed to propel me forward, my 
cape falling over the loose fabric of her own.
"Soon the scent of the water was gone, and when the moon shone clear for an 
instant I could see right ahead of us what appeared to be a break in the woods. 
Claudia firmly clasped the lantern and shut its metal door. I moved to stop 
this, my hand struggling with hers; but then she said to me quietly, `Close your 
eyes for an instant, and then open them slowly. And when you do, you will see 
it.'
"A chill rose over me as I did this, during which I held fast to her-shoulder. 
But then I opened my eyes and saw beyond the distant bark of the trees the long, 
low walls of the monastery and the high square top of the massive tower. Far 
beyond it, above an immense black valley, gleamed the snow-capped peaks of the 
mountains. 'Come,' she said to me, `quiet, as if your body has no weight.' And 
she started without hesitation right towards those walls, right towards whatever 
might have been waiting in their shelter.
"In moments we had found the gap that would admit us, the great opening that was 
blacker still than the walls around it, the vines encrusting its edges as if to 
hold the stones in place. High above, through the open room, the damp smell of 
the stones strong in my nostrils, I saw, beyond the streaks of clouds, a faint 
sprinkling of stars. A great staircase moved upward, from corner to corner, all 
the way to the narrow windows that looked out upon the valley. And beneath the 
first rise of the stair, out of the gloom emerged the vast, dark opening to the 
monastery's remaining rooms.
"Claudia was still now, as if she had become the stones. In the damp enclosure 
not even the soft tendrils of her hair moved. She was listening. And then I was 
listening with her. There was only the low backdrop of the wind. She moved, 
slowly, deliberately, and with one pointed foot gradually cleared a space in the 
moist earth in front of her. I could see a flat stone there, and it sounded 
hollow as she gently tapped it with her heel. Then I could see the broad size of 
it and how it rose at one distant corner; and an image came to mind, dreadful in 
its sharpness, of that band of men and women from the village surrounding the 
stone, raising it with a giant lever. Claudia's eyes moved over the staircase 
and then fixed on the crumbling doorway beneath it. The moon shone for an 
instant through a lofty window. Then Claudia moved, so suddenly that she stood 
beside me without having made a sound. `Do you hear it?' she whispered. 
`Listen.'
"It was so low no mortal could have heard it. And it did not come from the 
ruins. It came from far off, not the long, meandering way that we had come up 
the slope, but another way, up the spine of the hill, directly from the village. 
Just a rustling now, a scraping, but it was steady; and then slowly the round 
tramping of a foot began to distinguish itself. Claudia's hand tightened on 
mine, and with a gentle pressure she moved me silently beneath the slope of the 
stairway. I could see the folds of her dress heave slightly beneath the edge of 
her cape. The tramp of the feet grew louder, and I began to sense that one step 
preceded the other very sharply, the second dragging slowly across the earth. It 
was a limping step, drawing nearer and nearer over the low whistling of the 
wind. My own heart beat hard against my chest, and I felt the veins in my 
temples tighten, a tremor passing through my limbs, so that I could feel the 
fabric of my shirt against me, the stiff cut of the collar, the very scraping of 
the buttons against my cape.
"Then a faint scent came with the wind. It was the scent of blood, at once 
arousing me, against my will, the warm, sweet scent of human blood, blood that 
was spilling, flowing and then I sensed the smell of living flesh and I heard in 
time with the feet a dry, hoarse breathing. But with it came another sound, 
faint and intermingled with the first, as the feet tramped closer and closer to 
the walls, the sound of yet another creature's halting, strained breath. And I 
could hear the heart of that creature, beating irregularly, a fearful throbbing; 
but beneath that was another heart, a steady, pulsing heart growing louder and 
louder, a heart as strong as my own? Then, in the jagged gap through which we'd 
come, I saw him.
`His great, huge shoulder emerged first and one long, loose arm and hand, the 
fingers curved; then I saw his head. Over his other shoulder he was carrying a 
body. In the broken doorway he straightened and shifted the weight and stared 
directly into the darkness towards us. Every muscle in me became iron as I 
looked at him, saw the outline of his head looming there against the sky. But 
nothing of his face was visible except the barest glint of the moon on his eye 
as if it were a fragment of glass. Then I saw it glint on his buttons and heard 
them rustle as his arm swung free again and one long leg bent as he moved 
forward and proceeded into the tower right towards us.
"I held fast to Claudia, ready in an instant to shove her behind me, to step 
forward to meet him. But then I saw with astonishment that his eyes did not see 
me as I saw him, and he was trudging under the weight of the body he carried 
towards the monastery door. The moon fell now on his bowed head, on a mass of 
wavy black hair that touched his bent shoulder, and on the full black sleeve of 
his coat. I saw something about his coat; the flap of it was badly torn and the 
sleeve appeared to be ripped from the seam. I almost fancied I could see his 
flesh through the shoulder. The human in his arms stirred now, and moaned 
miserably. And the figure stopped for a moment and appeared to stroke the human 
with his hand. And at that moment I stepped forward from the wall and went 
towards him.
"No words passed my lips: I knew none to say. I only knew that I moved into the 
light of the moon before him and that his dark, wavy head rose with a jerk, and 
that I saw his eyes.
"For one full instant he looked at me, and I saw the light shining in those eyes 
and then glinting on two sharp canine teeth; and then a low strangled cry seemed 
to rise from the depths of his throat which, for a second, I thought to be my 
own. The human crashed to the stones, a shuddering moan escaping his lips. And 
the vampire lunged at me, that strangled cry rising again as the stench of fetid 
breath rose in my nostrils and the clawlike fingers cut into the very fur of my 
cape. I fell backwards, my head cracking against the wall, my hands grabbing at 
his head, clutching a mass of tangled filth that was his hair. At once the wet, 
rotting fabric of his coat ripped in my grasp, but the arm that held me was like 
iron; and, as I struggled to pull the head backwards, the fangs touched the 
flesh of my throat. Claudia screamed behind him. Something hit his head hard, 
which stopped him suddenly; and then he was hit again. He turned as if to strike 
her a blow, and I sent my fist against his face as powerfully as I could. Again 
a stone struck him as she darted away, and I threw my full weight against him 
and felt his crippled leg buckling. I remember pounding his head over and over, 
my fingers all but pulling that filthy hair out by the roots, his fangs 
projected towards me, his hands scratching, clawing at me. We rolled over and 
over, until I pinned him down again and the moon shone full on his face. And I 
realized, through my frantic sobbing breaths, what it was I held in my arms. The 
two huge eyes bulged from naked sockets and two small, hideous holes made up his 
nose; only a putrid, leathery flesh enclosed his skull, and the rank, rotting 
rags that covered his frame were thick with earth and slime and blood. I was 
battling a mindless, animated corpse. But no more.
"From above him, a sharp stone fell full on his forehead, and a fount of blood 
gushed from between his eyes. He struggled, but another stone crashed with such 
force I heard the bones shatter. Blood seeped out beneath the matted hair, 
soaking into the stones and grass. The chest throbbed beneath me, but the arms 
shuddered and grew still. I drew up, my throat knotted, my heart burning, every 
fiber of my body aching from the struggle. For a moment the great tower seemed 
to tilt, but then it righted itself. I lay against the wall, staring at the 
thing, the blood rushing in my ears. Gradually I realized that Claudia knelt on 
his chest, that she was probing the mass of hair and bone that had been his 
head. She was scattering the fragments of his skull. We had met the European 
vampire, the creature of the Old World. He was dead"
"For a long time I lay on the broad stairway, oblivious to the thick earth that 
covered it, my head feeling very cool against the earth, just looking at him. 
Claudia stood at his feet, hands hanging limply at her sides. I saw her eyes 
close for an instant, two tiny lids that made her face like a small, moonlit 
white statue as she stood there. And then her body began to rock very slowly. 
'Claudia,' I called to her. She awakened. She was gaunt such as I had seldom 
seen her. She pointed to the human who lay far across the floor of the tower 
near the wall. He was still motionless, but I knew that he was not dead. I'd 
forgotten him completely, my body aching as it was, my senses still clouded with 
the stench of the bleeding corpse. But now I saw the man. And in some part of my 
mind I knew what his fate would be, and I cared nothing for it. I knew it was 
only an hour at most before dawn.
" `He's moving,' she said to me. And I tried to rise off the steps. Better that 
he not wake, better that he never wake at all, I wanted to say; she was walking 
towards him, passing indifferently the dead thing that had nearly killed us 
both. I saw her back and the man stirring in front of her, his foot twisting in 
the grass. I don't know what I expected to see as I drew nearer, what terrified 
peasant or farmer, what miserable wretch that had already seen the face of that 
thing that had brought it here. And for a moment I did not realize who it was 
that lay there, that it was Morgan, whose pale face showed now in the moon, the 
marks of the vampire on his throat, his blue eyes staring mute and 
expressionless before him.
"Suddenly they widened as I drew close to him. `Louis!' he whispered in 
astonishment, his lips moving as if he were trying to frame words but could not. 
`Louis . . .' he said again; and then I saw he was smiling. A dry, rasping sound 
came from him as he struggled to his knees, and he reached out for me. His 
blanched, contorted face strained as the sound died in his throat, and he nodded 
desperately, his red hair loose and disheveled, falling into his eyes. I turned 
and ran from him. Claudia shot past me, gripping me by the arm. `Do you see the 
color of the sky!' she hissed at me. Morgan fell forward on his hands behind 
her. `Louis,' he called out again, the light gleaming in his eyes. He seemed 
blind to the ruins, blind to the night, blind to everything but a face he 
recognized, that one word again issuing from his lips. I put my hands to my 
ears, backing away from him. His hand was bloody now as he lifted it. I could 
smell the blood as well as see it. And Claudia could smell it, too.
"Swiftly she descended on him, pushing him down against the stones, her white 
fingers moving through his red hair. He tried to raise his head. His 
outstretched hands made a frame about her face, and then suddenly he began to 
stroke her yellow curls. She sank her teeth, and the hands dropped helpless at 
his side.
"I was at the edge of the forest when she caught up with me. `You must go to 
him, take him,' she commanded. I could smell the blood on her lips, see the 
warmth in her cheeks. Her wrist burned against me, yet I did not move. `Listen 
to me, Louis,' she said, her voice at once desperate and angry. `I left him for 
you, but he's dying . . . there's no time.'
"I swung her up into my arms and started the long descent. No need for caution, 
no need for stealth, no preternatural host waiting. The door to the secrets of 
eastern Europe was shut against us. I was plowing through the dark to the road. 
`Will you listen to me,' she cried out. But I went on in spite of her, her hands 
clutching at my coat, my hair. `Do you see the sky; do you see it!' she railed.
"She was all but sobbing against my breast as I splashed through the icy stream 
and ran headlong in search of the lantern at the road.
"The sky was a dark blue when I found the carriage. :Give me the crucifix,' I 
shouted to Claudia as I cracked the whip. `There's only one place to go.' She 
was thrown against me as the carriage rocked into its turn and headed for the 
village.
"I had the eeriest feeling then as I could see the mist rising amongst the dark 
brown trees. The air was cold and fresh and the birds had begun. It was as if 
the sun were rising. Yet I did not care. And yet I knew that it was not rising, 
that there was still time. It was a marvelous, quieting feeling. The scrapes and 
cuts burned my flesh and my heart ached with hunger, but my head felt 
marvelously light. Until I saw the gray shapes of the inn and the steeple of the 
church; they were too clear. And the stars above were fading fast.
"In a moment I was hammering on the door of the inn. As it opened, I put my hood 
up around my face tightly and held Claudia beneath my cape in a bundle. `Your 
village is rid of the vampire!' I said to the woman, who stared at me in 
astonishment. I was clutching the crucifix which she'd given me. `Thanks be to 
God he's dead. You'll find the remains in the tower. Tell this to your people at 
once.' I pushed past her into the inn.
"The gathering was roused into commotion instantly, but I insisted that I was 
tired beyond endurance. I must pray and rest. They were-to get my chest from the 
carriage and bring it to a decent room where I might sleep. But a message was to 
come for me from the bishop at Varna and for this, and this only, was I to be 
awakened. `Tell the good father when he arrives that the vampire is dead, and 
then give him food and drink and have him wait for me,' I said. The woman was 
crossing herself. `You understand,' I said to her, as I hurried towards the 
stairs, `I couldn't reveal my mission to you until after the vampire had been. . 
.
`Yes, yes,' she said to me. `But you are not a priest . . . the child!' `No, 
only too well-versed in these matters. The Unholy One is no match for me,' I 
said to her. I stopped. The door of the little parlor stood open, with nothing 
but a white square of cloth on the oak table. `Your friend,' she said to me, and 
she looked at the floor. `He rushed out into the night . . . he was mad.' I only 
nodded.
"I could hear them shouting when I shut the door of the room. They seemed to be 
running in all directions; and then came the sharp sound of the church bell in 
the rapid peal of alarm. Claudia had slipped down from my arms, and she was 
staring at me gravely as I bolted the door. Very slowly I unlatched the shutter 
of the window. An icy light seeped into the room. Still she watched me. Then I 
felt her at my side. I looked down to see she was holding out her hand to me. 
`Here,' she said. She must have seen I was confused. I felt so weak that her 
face was shimmering as I looked at it, the blue of her eyes dancing on her white 
cheeks.
" `Drink,' she whispered, drawing nearer. `Drink.' And she held the soft, tender 
flesh of the wrist towards me. 'No, I know what to do; haven't I done it in the 
past?' I said to her. It was she who bolted the window tight, latched the heavy 
door. I remember kneeling by the small grate and feeling the ancient paneling. 
It was rotten behind the varnished surface, and it gave under my fingers. 
Suddenly I saw my fist go through it and felt the sharp jab of splinter in my 
wrist. And then I remember feeling in the dark and catching hold of something 
warm and pulsing. A rush of cold, damp air hit my face and I saw a darkness 
rising about me, cool and damp as if this air were a silent water that seeped 
through the broken wall and filled the room. The room was gone. I was drinking 
from a never-ending stream of warm blood that flowed down my throat and through 
my pulsing heart and through my veins, so that my skin warmed against this cool, 
dark water. And now the pulse of the blood I drank slackened, and all my body 
cried out for it not to slacken, my heart pounding, trying to make that heart 
pound with it. I felt myself rising, as if I were floating in the darkness, and 
then the darkness, like the heartbeat, began to fade.. Something glimmered in my 
swoon; it shivered ever so slightly with the pounding of feet on the stairs, on 
the floorboards, the rolling of wheels and horses' hooves on the earth, and it 
gave off a tinkling sound as it shivered. It had a small wooden frame around it, 
and in that frame there emerged, through the glimmer, the figure of a man. He 
was familiar. I knew his long, slender build, his black, wavy hair. Then I saw 
that his green eyes were gazing at me. And in his teeth, in his teeth, he was 
clutching something huge and soft and brown, which he pressed tightly with both 
his hands. It was a rat. A great loathsome brown rat he held, its feet poised, 
its mouth agape, its great curved tail frozen in the air. Crying out, he threw 
it down and stared aghast, blood flowing from his open mouth.
"A searing light hit my eyes. I struggled to open them against it, and the 
entire room was glowing. Claudia was right in front of me. She was not a tiny 
child, but someone much larger who drew me forward towards her with both hands. 
She was on her knees, and my arms encircled her waist. Then darkness descended, 
and I had her folded against me. The lock slid into place. Numbness carne over 
my limbs, and then the paralysis of oblivion."
And that was how it was throughout Transylvania and Hungary and Bulgaria, and 
through all those countries where the peasants know that the living dead walk, 
and the legends of the vampires abound. In every village where we did encounter 
the vampire, it was the same."
"A mindless corpse?" the boy asked.
"Always," said the vampire. "When we found these creatures at all. I remember a 
handful at most. Sometimes we only watched them from a distance, all too 
familiar with their wagging, bovine heads, their haggard shoulders, their 
rotted, ragged clothing. In one hamlet it was a woman, only dead for perhaps a 
few months; the villagers had glimpsed her and knew her by name. It was she who 
gave us the only hope we were to experience after the monster in Transylvania, 
and that hope came to nothing. She fled from us through the forest and we ran 
after her, reaching out for her long, black hair. Her white burial gown was 
soaked with dried blood, her fingers caked with the dirt of the grave. And her 
eyes . . . they were mindless, two pools that reflected the moon. No secrets, no 
truths, only despair."
"But what were these creatures? Why were they like this?" asked the boy, his 
lips grimacing with disgust. "I don't understand. How could they be so different 
from you and Claudia, yet exist?"
"I had my theories. So did Claudia. But the main thing which I had then was 
despair. And in despair the recurring fear that we had killed the only other 
vampire like us, Lestat. Yet it seemed unthinkable. Had he possessed the wisdom 
of a sorcerer, the powers of a. witch . . . I might have come to understand that 
he had somehow managed to wrest a conscious life from the same forces that 
governed these monsters. But he was only Lestat, as I've described him to you: 
devoid of mystery, finally, his limits as familiar to me in those months in 
eastern Europe as. his charms. I wanted to forget -him, and yet it seemed I 
thought of him always. It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of 
him. And sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had 
only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow 
there was a disturbing comfort in that, and, despite myself, I'd envision his 
face-not as it had been the last night in the fire, but on other nights, that 
last evening he spent with us at home, his hand playing idly with the keys of 
the spinet, his head tilted to one side. A sickness rose in me more wretched 
than anguish when I saw what my dreams were doing. I wanted him alive! In the 
dark nights of eastern Europe, Lestat was the only vampire I'd found.
"But Claudia's waking thoughts were of afar more practical nature. Over and 
over, she had me recount that night in the hotel in New Orleans when she'd 
become a vampire, and over and over she searched the process for some clue to 
why these things we met in the country graveyards had no mind. What if, after 
Lestat's infusion of blood, she'd been put in a grave, closed up in it until the 
preternatural drive for blood caused her to break the stone door of the vault 
that held her, what then would her mind have been, starved, as it were, to the 
breaking point? Her body might have saved itself when no mind remained. And 
through the world she would have blundered, ravaging where she could, as we saw 
these creatures do. That was how she explained them. But what had fathered them, 
how had they begun? That was what she couldn't explain and what gave her hope of 
discovery when I, from sheer exhaustion, had none. `They spawn their own kind, 
it's obvious, but where does it begin?' she asked. And then, somewhere near the 
outskirts of Vienna, she put the question to me which had never before passed 
her lips. Why could I not do what Lestat had done with both of us? Why could I 
not make another vampire? I don't know why at first I didn't even understand 
her, except that in loathing what I was with every impulse in me I had a 
particular fear of that question, which was almost worse than any other. You 
see, I didn't understand something strong in myself. Loneliness had caused me to 
think on that very possibility years before, when I had fallen under the spell 
of Babette Freniere. But I held it locked inside of me like an unclean passion. 
I shunned mortal life after her. I killed strangers. And the Englishman Morgan, 
because I knew him, was as safe from my fatal embrace as Babette had been. They 
both caused me too much pain. Death I couldn't think of giving them. Life in 
death-it was monstrous. I turned away from Claudia. I wouldn't answer her. But 
angry as she was, wretched as was her impatience, she could not stand this 
turning away. And she drew near to me, comforting me with her hands and her eyes 
as if she were my loving daughter.
" `Don't think on it, Louis,' she said later, when we were comfortably situated 
in a small suburban hotel. I was standing at the window, looking at the distant 
glow of Vienna, so eager for that city, its civilization, its sheer size. The 
night was clear and the haze of the city was on the sky. `Let me put your 
conscience at ease, though I'll never know precisely what it is,' she said into 
my ear, her hand stroking my hair.
" `Do that, Claudia,' I answered her. `Put it at ease. Tell me that you'll never 
speak to me of making vampires again.'
" `I want no orphans such as ourselves!' she said, all too quickly. My words 
annoyed her. My feeling annoyed her. `I want answers, knowledge, she said. But 
tell me, Louis, what makes you so certain that you've never done this without 
your knowing it?'
"Again there was that deliberate obtuseness in me. I must look at her as if I 
didn't know the meaning of her words. I wanted her to be silent and to be near 
me, and for us to be in Vienna. I drew her hair back and let my fingertips touch 
her long lashes and looked away at the light.
" `After all, what does it take to make those creatures?' she went on. `Those 
vagabond monsters? How many drops of your blood intermingled with a man's blood 
. . . and what kind of heart to survive that first attack?'
"I could feel her watching my face, and I stood there, my arms folded, my back 
to the side of the window, looking out.
" `That pale-faced Emily, that miserable Englishman . . .' she said, oblivious 
to the flicker of pain in my face. `Their hearts were nothing, and it was the 
fear of death as much as the drawing of blood that killed them. The idea killed 
them. But what of the hearts that survive? Are you sure you haven't fathered a 
league of monsters who, from time to time, struggled vainly and instinctively to 
follow in your footsteps? What was their life span; these orphans you left 
behind you-a day there, a week here, before the sun burnt them to ashes or some 
mortal victim cut them down?'
" `Stop it,' I begged her. 'If you knew how completely I envision everything you 
describe, you would not describe it. I tell you it's never happened! Lestat 
drained me to the point of death to make me a vampire. And gave back all that 
blood mingled with his own. That is how it was done!'
"She looked away from me, and then it seemed she was looking down at her hands. 
I think I heard her sigh, but I wasn't certain. And then her eyes moved over me, 
slowly, up and down, before they finally met mine. Then it seemed she smiled. 
`Don't be frightened of my fancy,' she said softly. `After all, the final 
decision will always rest with you. Is that not so?'
" `I don't understand,' I said. And a cold laughter erupted from her as she 
turned away.
" `Can you picture it?' she said, so softly I scarcely heard. BA coven of 
children? That is all I could provide. . '
" `Claudia,' I murmured.
" `Rest easy,' she said abruptly, her voice still low. `I tell you that as much 
as I hated Lestat . . ' She stopped.
" `Yes . . ' I whispered. `Yes. . . .'
" 'As much as I hated him, with him we were . . . complete.' She looked at me, 
her eyelids quivering, as if the slight rise in her voice had disturbed her even 
as it had disturbed me.
" `No, only you were complete . . .' I said to her. `Because there were two of 
us, one on either side of you, from the beginning.'
"I thought I saw her smile then, but I was not certain. She bowed her head, but 
I could see her eyes moving beneath the lashes, back and forth, back and forth. 
Then she said, `The two of you at my side. Do you picture that as you say it, as 
you picture everything else?'
"One night, long gone by, was as material to me as if I were in it still, but I 
didn't tell her. She was desperate in that night, running away from Lestat, who 
had urged her to kill a woman in the street from whom she'd backed off, clearly 
alarmed. I was sure the woman had resembled her mother. Finally she'd escaped us 
entirely, but I'd found her in the armoire, beneath the jackets and coats, 
clinging to her doll. And, carrying her to her crib, I sat beside her and sang 
to her, and she stared at me as she clung to that doll, as if trying blindly and 
mysteriously to calm a pain she herself did not begin to understand. Can you 
picture it, this splendid domesticity, dim lamps, the vampire father singing to 
the vampire daughter? Only the doll had a human face, only the doll.
" `But we must get away from here!' said the present Claudia suddenly, as though 
the thought had just taken shape in her mind with a special urgency. She had her 
hand to her ear, as if clutching it against some awful sound. `From the roads 
behind us, from what I see in your eyes now, because I give voice to thoughts 
which are nothing more to me than plain considerations . . '
" `Forgive me,' I said as gently as I could, withdrawing slowly from that 
long-ago room, that ruffled crib, that frightened monster child and monster 
voice. And Lestat, where was Lestat? A match striking in the other room, a 
shadow leaping suddenly into life, as light and dark come alive where there was 
only darkness.
" `No, you forgive me . . .' she was saying to me now, in this little hotel room 
near the first capital of western Europe. `No, we forgive each other. But we 
don't forgive him; and, without him, you see what things are between us:
" `Only now because we are tired, and things are dreary . . ' I said to her and 
to myself, because there was no one else in the world to whom I could speak.
" `Ah, yes; and that is what must end. I tell you, I begin to understand that we 
have done it all wrong from the start. We must bypass Vienna. We need our 
language, our people. I want to go directly now to Paris.' 
 
PART III
 
"l think the very name of Paris brought a rush of pleasure to me that was 
extraordinary, a relief so near to well-being that I was amazed, not only that I 
could feel it, but that I'd so nearly forgotten it.
"I wonder if you can understand what it meant. My expression can't convey. it 
now, for what Paris means to me is very different from what it meant then, in 
those days, at that hour; but still, even now, to think of it, I feel something 
akin to that happiness. And I've more reason now than ever to say that happiness 
is not what I will ever know, or will ever deserve to know. I am not so much in 
love with happiness. Yet the name Paris makes me feel it.
"Mortal beauty often makes me ache, and mortal grandeur can fill me with that 
longing I felt so hopelessly in the Mediterranean Sea. But Paris, Paris drew me 
close to her heart, so I forgot myself entirely. Forgot the damned and questing 
preternatural thing that doted on mortal skin and mortal clothing. Paris 
overwhelmed, and lightened and rewarded more richly than any promise.
"It was the mother of New Orleans, understand that first; it had given New 
Orleans its life, its first populace; and it was what New Orleans had for so 
long tried to be. But New Orleans, though beautiful and desperately alive, was 
desperately fragile. There was something forever savage and primitive there, 
something that threatened the exotic and sophisticated life both from within and 
without. Not an inch of those wooden streets nor a brick of the crowded Spanish 
houses had not been bought from the fierce wilderness that forever surrounded 
the city, ready to engulf it. Hurricanes, floods, fevers, the plague-and the 
damp of the Louisiana climate itself worked tirelessly on every hewn plank or 
stone facade, so that New Orleans seemed at all times like a dream in the 
imagination of her striving populace, a dream held intact at every second by a 
tenacious, though unconscious, collective will.
"But Paris, Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and 
fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her 
towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient 
winding medieval streets-as vast and indestructible as nature itself. All was 
embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries, 
the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity, 
philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the 
world outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful, 
what was essential might there still come to its finest flower. Even the 
majestic trees that graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her--and 
the waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her 
heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had 
ceased to be the earth and had become Paris.
"We were alive again. We were in love, and so euphoric was I after those 
hopeless nights of wandering in eastern Europe that I yielded completely when 
Claudia moved us into the Hote1 Saint-Gabriel on the Boulevard des Capucines. It 
was rumored to be one of the largest hotels in Europe, its immense rooms 
dwarfing the memory of our old town house, while at the same time recalling it 
with a comfortable splendor. We were to have one of the finest suites. Our 
windows looked out over the gas-lit boulevard itself where, in the early 
evening, the asphalt sidewalks teemed with strollers and an endless stream of 
carriages flowed past, taking lavishly dressed ladies and their gentlemen to the 
Opera or the Opera Comique, the ballet, the theaters, the balls and receptions 
without end at the Tuileries.
"Claudia put her reasons for expense to me gently and logically, but I could see 
that she became impatient ordering everything through me; it was wearing for 
her. The hotel, she said, quietly afforded us complete freedom, our nocturnal 
habits going unnoticed in the continual press of European tourists, our rooms 
immaculately maintained by an anonymous staff, while the immense price we paid 
guaranteed our privacy and our security. But there was more to it than that. 
There was a feverish purpose to her buying.
" `This is my world,' she explained to me as she sat in a small velvet chair 
before the open balcony, watching the long row of broughams stopping one by one 
before the hotel doors. `I must have it as I like,' she said, as if speaking to 
herself. And so it was as she liked, stunning wallpaper of rose and gold, an 
abundance of damask and velvet furniture, embroidered pillows and silk trappings 
for the fourposter bed. Dozens of roses appeared daily for the marble .mantels 
and the inlaid tables, crowding the curtained alcove of her dressing room, 
reflected endlessly in tilted mirrors. And finally she crowded the high French 
windows with a veritable garden of camellia and fern. `I miss the flowers; more 
than anything else I miss the flowers,' she mused. And sought after them even in 
the paintings which we brought from the shops and the galleries, magnificent 
canvases such as I'd never seen in New Orleans-from the classically executed 
lifelike bouquets, tempting you to reach for the petals that fell on a 
three-dimensional tablecloth, to a new and disturbing style in which the colors 
seemed to blaze with such intensity they destroyed the old lines, the old 
solidity, to make a vision like to those states when I'm nearest my delirium and 
flowers grow before my eyes and crackle like the flames of lamps. Paris flowed 
into these rooms.
"I found myself at home there, again forsaking dreams of ethereal simplicity for 
what another's gentle insistence had given me, because the air was sweet like 
the air of our courtyard in the Rue Royale, and all was alive with a shocking 
profusion of gas light that rendered even the ornate lofty ceilings devoid of 
shadows. The light raced on the gilt curlicues, flickered in the baubles of the 
chandeliers. Darkness did not exist. Vampires did not exist.
"And even bent as I was on my quest, ' it was sweet to think that, for an hour, 
father and daughter climbed into the cabriolet from such civilized luxury only 
to ride along the banks of the Seine, over the bridge into the Latin Quarter to 
roam those darker, narrower streets in search of history, not victims. And then 
to return to the ticking clock and the brass andirons and the playing cards laid 
out upon the table. Books of poets, the program from a play, and all around the 
soft humming of the vast hotel, distant violins, a woman talking in a rapid, 
animated voice above the zinging of a hairbrush, and a man high above on the top 
floor repeating over and over to the night air, `I understand, I am just 
beginning, I am just beginning to understand. . .
`Is it as you would have it?' Claudia asked, perhaps just to let me know she 
hadn't forgotten me, for she was quiet now for hours; no talk of vampires. But 
something was wrong. It was not the old serenity, the pensiveness that was 
recollection. There was a brooding there, a smoldering dissatisfaction. And 
though it would vanish from her eyes when I would call to her or answer her, 
anger seemed to settle very near the surface.
" `Oh, you know how I would have it,' I answered, persisting in the myth of my 
own will. `Some garret near the Sorbonne, near enough to the noise of the Rue 
St. Michel, far enough away. But I would mainly have it as you would have it' 
And I could see her warmed, but looking past me, as if to say, `You have no 
remedy; don't draw too near; don't ask of me what I ask of you: are you 
content?'
"My memory is too clear; too sharp; things should wear at the edges, and what is 
unresolved should soften. So, scenes are near my heart like pictures in lockets, 
yet monstrous pictures no artist or camera would ever catch; and over and over I 
would see Claudia at the piano's edge that last night when Lestat was playing, 
preparing to die, her face when he was taunting her, that contortion that at 
once became a mask; attention might have saved his life, if, in fact, he were 
dead at all.
"Something was collecting in Claudia, revealing itself slowly to the most 
unwilling witness in the world. She had a new passion for rings and bracelets 
children did not wear. Her jaunty, straight-backed walk was not a child's, and 
often she entered small boutiques ahead of me and pointed a commanding finger at 
the perfume or the gloves she would then pay for herself. I was never far away, 
and always uncomfortable--not because I feared anything in this vast city, but 
because I feared her. She'd always been the `lost child' to her victims, the 
`orphan,' and now it seemed she would be something else, something wicked and 
shocking to the passers-by who succumbed to her. But this was often private; I 
was left for an hour haunting the carved edifices of Notre-Dame, or sitting at 
the edge of a park in the carriage.
"And then one night, when I awoke on the lavish bed in the suite of the hotel, 
my book crunched uncomfortably under me, I found her gone altogether. I didn't 
dare ask the attendants if they'd seen her. It was our practice to spirit past 
them; we had no name. I searched the corridors for her, the side streets, even 
the ballroom, where some almost inexplicable dread came over me at the thought 
of her there alone. But then I finally saw her coming through the side doors of 
the lobby, her hair beneath her bonnet brim sparkling from the light rain, the 
child rushing as if on a mischievous escapade, lighting the faces of doting men 
and women as she mounted the grand staircase and passed me, as if she hadn't 
seen me at all. An impossibility, a strange graceful slight.
"I shut the door behind me just as she was taking off her cape, and, in a flurry 
of golden raindrops, she shook it, shook her hair. The ribbons crushed from the 
bonnet fell loose and I felt a palpable relief to see the childish dress, those 
ribbons, and something wonderfully comforting in her arms, a small china doll. 
Still she said nothing to me; she was fussing with the doll. Jointed somehow 
with hooks or wire beneath its flouncing dress, its tiny feet tinkled like a 
bell. `it's a lady, doll,' she said, looking up at me. `See? A lady doll.' She 
put it on the dresser.
" 'So it is,' I whispered.
"'A woman made it,' she said. `She makes baby dolls, all the same, baby dolls, a 
shop of baby dolls, until I said to her, "I want a lady doll."'
"It was taunting, mysterious. She sat there now with the wet strands of hair 
streaking her high forehead, intent on that doll. `Do you know why she made it 
for me?' she asked. I was wishing now the room had shadows, that I could retreat 
from the warm circle of the superfluous fire into some darkness, that I wasn't 
sitting on the bed as if on a lighted stage, seeing her before me and in her 
mirrors, puffed sleeves and puffed sleeves.
" `Because you are a beautiful child and she wanted to make you happy,' I said, 
my voice small and foreign to myself.
"She was laughing soundlessly. `A beautiful child,' she said glancing up at me. 
'Is that what you still think I am?' And her face went dark as again she played 
with the doll, her fingers pushing the tiny crocheted neckline down toward the 
china breasts. `Yes, I resemble her baby dolls, I am her baby dolls. You should 
see her working in that shop; bent on her dolls, each with the same face, lips.' 
Her finger touched her own lip. Something seemed to shift suddenly, something 
within the very walls of the room itself, and the mirrors trembled with her 
image as if the earth had sighed beneath the foundations. Carriages rumbled in 
the streets; but they were too far away. And then I saw what her still childish 
figure was doing: in one hand she held the doll, the other to her lips; and the 
hand that held the doll was crushing it, crushing it and popping it so it bobbed 
and broke in a heap of glass that fell now from her open, bloody hand onto the 
carpet. She wrung the tiny dress to make a shower of littering particles as I 
averted my eyes, only to see her in the tilted mirror over the fire, see her 
eyes scanning me from my feet to the top of my head. She moved through that 
mirror towards me and drew close on the bed.
" `Why do you look away, why don't you look at me?' she asked, her voice very 
smooth, very like a silver bell. But then she laughed softly, a woman's laugh, 
and said, `Did you think I'd be your daughter forever? Are you the father of 
fools, the fool of fathers?'
" `Your tone is unkind with me,' I answered.
" `Hmmm . . . unkind.' I think she nodded. She was a blaze in the corner of my 
eye, blue flames, golden flames.
" `And what do they think of you,' I asked as gently as I could, `out there?' I 
gestured to the open window.
" `Many things.' She smiled. `Many things. Men are marvelous at explanations: 
Have you see the "little people" in the parks, the circuses, the freaks that men 
pay money to laugh at?'
"'I was a sorcerer's apprentice only!' I burst out suddenly, despite myself. 
`Apprentice!' I said. I wanted to touch her, to stroke her hair, but I sat there 
afraid of her, her anger like a match about to kindle.
"Again she smiled, and then she drew my hand into her lap and covered it as best 
she could with her own. `Apprentice, yes,' she laughed. `But tell me one thing, 
one thing from that lofty height. What was it like . . . making love?'
"I was walking away from her before I meant to, I was searching like a 
dim-wilted mortal man for cape and gloves. `You don't remember?' she asked with 
perfect calm, as I put my hand on the brass door handle.
"I stopped, feeling her eyes on my back, ashamed, and then I turned around and 
made as if to think, Where am I going, what shall I do, why do I stand here?
" `It was something hurried,' I said, trying now to meet her eyes. How 
perfectly, coldly blue they were. How earnest. `And . . . it was seldom savored 
. . . something acute that was quickly lost. I think that it was the pale shadow 
of killing.'
"'Ahhh . . .' she said. `Like hurting you as I do now . . . that is also the 
pale shadow of killing.'
" 'Yes, madam,' I said to her. `I am inclined to believe that is correct.' And 
bowing swiftly, I bade her good-night."
"It was a long time after I'd left her that I slowed my pace. I'd crossed the 
Seine. I wanted darkness. To hide from her and the feelings that welled up in 
me, and the great consuming fear that I was utterly inadequate to make her 
happy, or to make myself happy by pleasing her.
"I would have given the world to please her; the world we now possessed, which 
seemed at once empty and eternal. Yet I was injured by her words and by her 
eyes, and no amount of explanations to her which passed through and through my 
mind now, even forming on my lips in desperate whispers as I left the Rue St. 
Michel and went deeper and deeper into the older, darker streets of the Latin 
Quarter-no amount of explanations seemed to soothe what I imagined to be her 
grave dissatisfaction, or my own pain.
"Finally I left off words except for a strange chant.
I was in the black silence of a medieval street, and blindly I followed its 
sharp turns, comforted by the height of its narrow tenements, which seemed at 
any moment capable of falling together, closing this alleyway under the 
indifferent stars like a seam. `I cannot make her happy, I do not make her 
happy; and her unhappiness increases every day.' This was my chant, which I 
repeated like a rosary, a charm to change the facts, her inevitable 
disillusionment with our quest, which left us in this limbo where I felt her 
drawing away from me, dwarfing me with her enormous need. I even conceived a 
savage jealousy of the dollmaker to whom she'd confided her request for that 
tinkling diminutive lady, because that dollmaker had for a moment given her 
something which she held close to herself in my presence as if I were not there 
at all.
"What did it amount to, where could it lead?
"Never since I'd come to Paris months before did I so completely feel the city's 
immense size, how I might pass from this twisting, blind street of my choice 
into a world of delights, and never had I so keenly felt its uselessness. 
Uselessness to her if she could not abide this anger, if she could not somehow 
grasp the limits of which she seemed so angrily, bitterly aware. I was helpless. 
She was helpless. But she was stronger than I. And I knew, had known even at the 
moment when I turned away from her in the hotel, that behind her eyes there was 
for me her continuing love.
"And dizzy and weary and now comfortably lost, I became aware with a vampire's 
inextinguishable senses that I was being followed.
"my first thought was irrational. She'd come out after me. And, cleverer than I, 
had tracked me at a great distance. But as surely as this came to mind, another 
thought presented itself, a rather cruel thought in light of all that had passed 
between us. The steps were too heavy for hers. It was just some mortal walking 
in this same alley, walking unwarily towards death.
"So I continued on, almost ready to fall into my pain again because I deserved 
it, when my mind said, You are a fool; listen. And it dawned on me that these 
steps, echoing as they were at a great distance behind me, were in perfect time 
with my own. An accident. Because if mortal they were, they were too far off for 
mortal hearing. But as I stopped now to consider that, they stopped. And as I 
turned saying, Louis, you deceive yourself, and started up, they started up. 
Footfall with my footfall, gaining-speed now as I gained speed. And then 
something remarkable, undeniable occurred. En garde as I was for the steps that 
were behind me, I tripped on a fallen roof tile and was pitched against the 
wall. And behind me, those steps echoed to perfection the sharp shuffling rhythm 
of my fall.
"I was astonished. And in a state of alarm well beyond fear. To the right and 
left of me the street was dark. Not even a tarnished light shone in a garret 
window. And the only safety afforded me, the great distance between myself and 
these steps, was as I said the guarantee that they were not human. I was at a 
complete loss as to what I might do. I had the nearirresistible desire to call 
out to this being and welcome it, to let it know as quickly and as completely as 
possible that I awaited it, had been searching for it, would confront it. Yet I 
was afraid. What seemed sensible was to resume walking, waiting for it to gain 
on me; and as I did so I was again mocked by my own pace, and the distance 
between us remained the same. The tension mounted in me, the dark around me 
becoming more and more menacing; and I said over and over, measuring these 
steps, Why do you track me, why do you let me know you are there?
"Then I rounded a sharp turn in the street, and a gleam of light showed ahead of 
me at the next corner. The street sloped up towards it, and I moved on very 
slowly, my heart deafening in my ears, reluctant to eventually reveal myself in 
that light.
"And as I hesitated-stopped, in fact right before the turn; something rumbled 
and clattered above, as if the roof  of the house beside me had all but 
collapsed. I jumped back just in time, before a load of tiles crashed into the 
street, one of them brushing my shoulder. All was quiet now. I stared at the 
tiles, listening, waiting. And then slowly I edged around the turn into the 
light, only to see there looming over me at the top of the street beneath the 
gas lamp the unmistakable figure of another vampire.
" He was enormous in height though gaunt as myself, his long, white face very 
bright under the lamp, his large, black eyes staring .at me in what seemed 
undisguised wonder. His right leg was slightly bent as though he'd just come to 
a halt in mid-step. And then suddenly I realized that not only was his black 
hair long and full and combed precisely like my own, and not only was he dressed 
in identical coat and cape to my own, but he stood imitating my stance and 
facial expression to perfection. I swallowed and let my eyes pass over him 
slowly, while I struggled t(r) hide from him the rapid pace of my pulse as his 
eyes in. like manner passed over me. And when I saw him blink I realized I had 
just blinked, and as I drew my arms up and folded them across my chest he slowly 
did the same. It was maddening. Worse than maddening. Because, as I barely moved 
my lips, he barely moved his lips, and I found the words dead and I couldn't 
make other words to confront this, to stop it. And all the while, there was that 
height and those sharp black eyes and that powerful attention which was, of 
course, perfect mockery, but nevertheless riveted to myself. He was the vampire; 
I seemed the mirror.
" `Clever,' I said to him shortly and desperately, and, of course, he echoed 
that word as fast as I said it. And maddened as I was more by that than anything 
else, I found myself yielding to a slow smile, defying the sweat which had 
broken from every pore and the violent tremor in my legs. He also smiled, but 
his -eyes had a ferocity that was animal, unlike my own, and the smile was 
sinister in its sheer mechanical quality.
"Now I took a step forward and so did he; and when I ,stopped short, staring, so 
did he. But then he slowly, very slowly, lifted his right arm, though mine 
remained poised and gathering his fingers into a fist, he now struck at his 
chest in quickening time to mock my heartbeat. Laughter erupted from him. He 
threw back his head, showing his canine teeth, and the laughter seemed to fill 
the alleyway. I loathed him. Completely.
" `You mean me harm?' I asked, only to hear the words mockingly obliterated.
" `Trickster!' I said sharply. Buffoon!'
"That word stopped him. Died on his lips even as he was saying it, and his face 
went hard.
"What I did then was impulse. I turned my back on him and started away, perhaps 
to make him come after me and demand to know who I was. But in a movement so 
swift I couldn't possibly have seen it, he stood before me again, as if he had 
materialized there. Again I turned my back on him-only to face him under the 
lamp again, the settling of his dark, wavy hair the only indication that he had 
in fact moved.
" `I've been looking for you! I've come to Paris looking for you!' I forced 
myself to say the words, seeing that he didn't echo them or move, only stood 
staring at me.
"Now he moved forward slowly, gracefully, and I saw his own body and his own 
manner had regained possession of him and, extending his hand as if he meant to 
ask for mine, he very suddenly pushed me backwards, off-balance. I could feel my 
shirt drenched and sticking to my flesh as I righted myself, my hand grimed from 
the damp wall.
"And as I turned to confront him, he threw me completely down.
"I wish I could describe to you his power. You would know, if I were to attack 
you, to deal you a sharp blow with an arm you never saw move towards you.
"But something in me said, Show him your own power; and I rose up fast, going 
right for him with both arms out. And I hit the night, the empty night swirling 
beneath that lamppost, and stood there looking about me, alone and a complete 
fool. This was a test of some sort, I knew it then, though consciously I fixed 
my attention of the dark street, the recesses of the doorways, anyplace he might 
have hidden. I wanted no part of this test, but saw no way out of it. And I was 
contemplating some way to disdainfully make that clear when suddenly he appeared 
again, jerking me around and flinging me down the sloping cobblestones where I'd 
fallen before. I felt his boot against my ribs. And, enraged, I grabbed hold of 
his leg, scarcely believing it when I felt the cloth and the bone. He'd fallen 
against the stone wall opposite and let out a snarl of unrepressed anger.
"What happened then was pure confusion. I held tight to that leg, though the 
boot strained to get at me. And at some point, after he'd toppled over me and 
pulled loose from me, I was lifted into the air by strong hands. What might have 
happened I can well imagine. He could have flung me several yards from himself, 
he was easily that strong. And battered, severely injured, I might have lost 
consciousness. It was violently disturbing to me even in that melee that I 
didn't know whether I could lose consciousness. But it was never put to a test. 
For, confused as I was, I was certain someone else had come between us, someone 
who was battling him decisively, forcing him to relinquish his hold.
"When I looked up, I was in the street, and I saw two figures only for an 
instant, like the flicker of an image after the eye is shut. Then there was only 
a swirling of black garments, a boot striking the stones, and the night was 
empty. I sat, panting, the sweat pouring down my face, staring around me and 
then up at the narrow ribbon of faint sky. Slowly, only because my eye was 
totally concentrated upon it now, a figure emerged from the darkness of the wall 
above me. Crouched on the jutting stones of the lintel, it turned so that I saw 
the barest gleam of light on the hair and then the stark, white face. A strange 
face, broader and not so gaunt as the other, a large dark eye that was holding 
me steadily. A whisper came from the lips, though they never appeared to move. 
`You are all right.'
"I was more than all right. I was on my feet, ready to attack. But the figure 
remained crouched, as if it were part of the wall. I could see a white hand 
working in what appeared to be a waistcoat pocket. A card appeared, white as the 
fingers that extended it to me. I didn't move to take it. `Come to us, tomorrow 
night,' said that same whisper from the smooth, expressionless face, which still 
showed only one eye to the light. `I won't harm you,' he said, `And neither will 
that other. I won't allow it.' And his hand did that thing which vampires can 
make happen; that is, it seemed to leave his body in the dark to deposit the 
card in my hand, the purple script immediately shining in the light. And the 
figure, moving upwards like a cat on the wall, vanished fast between the garret 
gables overhead.
"I knew I was alone now, could feel it. And the pounding of my heart seemed to 
fill the empty little street as I stood under the lamp reading that card. The 
address I knew well enough, because I had been to theaters along that street 
more than once. But the name was astonishing: `Theatre des Vampires,' and the 
time noted, nine P.m.
"I turned it over and discovered written there the note, `Bring the petite 
beauty with you. You are most welcome. Armand!
"There was no doubt that the figure who'd given it to me had written this 
message. And I had only a very short time to get to the hotel and to tell 
Claudia of these things before dawn. I was running fast, so that even the people 
I passed on the boulevards did not actually see the shadow that brushed them."
The Theatre des Vampires was by invitation only, and the next night the doorman 
inspected my card for a moment while the rain fell softly all around us: on the 
man and the woman stopped at the shut-up box office; on the crinkling posters of 
penny-dreadful vampires with their outstretched arms and cloaks resembling bat 
wings ready to close on the naked shoulders of a mortal victim; on the couple 
that pressed past us into the packed lobby, where I could easily perceive that 
the crowd was all human, no vampires among them, not even this boy who admitted 
us finally into the press of conversation and damp wool and ladies' gloved 
fingers fumbling with felt-brimmed hats and wet curls. I pressed for the shadows 
in a feverish excitement. We had fed earlier only so that in the bustling street 
of this theater our skin would not be too white, our eyes too unclouded. And 
that taste of blood which I had not enjoyed had left me all the more uneasy; but 
I had no time for it. This was no night for killing. This was to be a night of 
revelations, no matter how it ended. I was certain.
"Yet here we stood with this all too human crowd, the doors opening now on the 
auditorium, and a young boy pushing towards us, beckoning, pointing above the 
shoulders of the crowd to the stairs. Ours was a box, one of the best in the 
house, and if the blood had not dimmed my skin completely nor made Claudia into 
a human child as she rode in my arms, this usher did not seem at all to notice 
it nor to care. In fact, he smiled all too readily as he drew back the curtain 
for us on two chairs before the brass rail.
" `Would you put it past them to have human slaves?' Claudia whispered.
" `But Lestat never trusted human slaves,' I answered. I watched the seats fill, 
watched the marvelously flowered hats navigating below me through the rows of 
silk chairs. White shoulders gleamed in the deep curve of the balcony spreading 
out from us; diamonds glittered in the gas light. `Remember, be sly for once,' 
came Claudia's whisper from beneath her bowed blond head. `You're too much of a 
gentleman.'
"The lights were going out, first in the balcony, and then along the walls of 
the main floor. A knot of musicians had gathered in the pit below the stage, and 
at the foot of the long, green velvet curtain the gas flickered, then 
brightened, and the audience receded as if enveloped by a gray cloud through 
which only the diamonds sparkled, on wrists, on throats, on fingers. And a hush 
descended like that gray cloud until all the sound was collected in one echoing 
persistent cough. Then silence. And the slow, rhythmical beating of a 
tambourine. Added to that was the thin melody of a wooden flute, which seemed to 
pick up the sharp metallic tink of the bells of the tambourine, winding them 
into a haunting melody that was medieval in sound. Then the strumming of strings 
that emphasized the tambourine. And the flute rose, in that melody singing of 
something melancholy, sad. It had a charm to it, this music, and the whole 
audience seemed stilled and united by it, as if the music of that flute were a 
luminous ribbon unfurling slowly in the dark. Not even the rising curtain broke 
the silence with the slightest sound. The lights brightened, and it seemed the 
stage was not the stage but a thickly wooded place, the light glittering on the 
roughened tree trunks and the thick clusters of leaves beneath the arch of 
darkness above; and through the trees could be seen what appeared the low, stone 
bank of a river and above that, beyond that, the glittering waters of the river 
itself, this whole three-dimensional world produced in painting upon a fine silk 
scrim that shivered only slightly in a faint draft.
"A sprinkling of applause greeted the illusion, gathering adherents from all 
parts of the auditorium until it reached its short crescendo and died away. A 
dark, draped figure was moving on the stage from tree trunk to tree trunk, so 
fast that as he stepped into the lights he seemed to appear magically in the 
center, one arm flashing out from his cloak to show a silver scythe and the 
other to hold a mask on a slender stick before the invisible face, a mask which 
showed the gleaming countenance of Death, a painted skull.
"There were gasps from the crowd. It was Death standing before the audience, the 
scythe poised, Death at the edge of a dark wood. And something in me was 
responding now as the audience responded, not in fear, but in some human way, to 
the magic of that fragile painted set, the mystery of the lighted world there, 
the world in which this figure moved in his billowing black cloak, back and 
forth before the audience with the grace of a great panther, drawing forth, as 
it were, those gasps, those sighs, those reverent murmurs.
"And now, behind this figure, whose very gestures seemed to have a captivating 
power like the rhythm of the music to which it moved, came other figures from 
the wings. First an old woman, very stooped and bent, her gray hair like moss, 
her arm hanging down with the weight of a great basket of flowers. Her shuttling 
steps scraped on the stage, and her head bobbed with the rhythm of the music and 
the darting steps of the Grim Reaper. And then she started back as she laid eyes 
on him and, slowly setting down her basket, made her hands into the attitude of 
prayer. She was tired; her head leaned now on her hands as if in sleep, and she 
reached out for him, supplicating. But as he came towards her, he bent to look 
directly into her face, which was all shadows to us beneath her hair, and 
started back then, waving his hand as if to freshen the air. Laughter erupted 
uncertainly from the audience. But as the old woman rose and took after Death, 
the laughter took over.
"The music broke into a jig with their running, as round and round the stage the 
old woman pursued Death, until he finally flattened himself into the dark of a 
tree trunk, bowing his masked face under his wing like a bird. And the old 
woman, lost, defeated, gathered up her basket as the music softened and slowed 
to her pace, and made her way off the stage. I did not like it. I did not like 
the laughter. I could see the other figures moving in now, the music 
orchestrating their gestures, cripples on crutches and beggars with rags the 
color of ash, all reaching out for Death, who whirled, escaping this one with a 
sudden arching of the back, fleeing from that one with an effeminate gesture of 
disgust, waving them all away finally in a foppish display of weariness and 
boredom.
"It was then I realized that the languid, white hand that made these comic arcs 
was not painted white. It was a vampire hand which wrung laughter from the 
crowd. A vampire hand lifted now to the grinning skull, as the stage was finally 
clear, as if stifling a yawn. And then this vampire, still holding the mask 
before his face, adopted marvelously the attitude of resting his weight against 
a painted silken tree, as if he were falling gently to sleep. The music 
twittered like birds, rippled like the flowing of the water; and the spotlight, 
which encircled him in a yellow pool, grew dim, all but fading away as he slept.
"And another spot pierced the scrim, seeming to melt it altogether, to reveal a 
young woman standing alone far upstage. She was majestically tall and all but 
enshrined by a voluminous mane of golden blond hair. I could feel the awe of the 
audience as she seemed to founder in the spotlight, the dark forest rising on 
the perimeter, so that she seemed to be lost in the trees. And she was lost; and 
not a vampire. The soil on her mean blouse and skirt was not stage paint, and 
nothing had touched her perfect face, which gazed into the light now, as 
beautiful and finely chiseled as the face of a marble Virgin, that hair her 
haloed veil. She could not see in the light, though all could see her. And the 
moan which escaped her lips as she floundered seemed to echo over the thin, 
romantic singing of the flute, which was a tribute to that beauty. The figure of 
Death woke with a start in his pale spotlight and turned to see her as the 
audience had seen her, and to throw up his free hand in tribute, in awe.
"The twitter of laughter died before it became real. She was too beautiful, her 
gray eyes too distressed. The performance too perfect. And then the skull mask 
was thrown suddenly into the wings and Death showed a beaming white face to the 
audience, his hurried
hands stroking his handsome black hair, straightening a waistcoat, brushing 
imaginary dust from his lapels. Death in love. And clapping rose for the 
luminous countenance, the gleaming cheekbones, the winking black eye, as if it 
were all masterful illusion when in fact it was merely and certainly the face of 
a vampire, the vampire who had accosted me in the Latin Quarter, that leering, 
grinning vampire, harshly illuminated by the yellow spot.
"My hand reached for Claudia's in the dark and pressed it tightly. But she sat 
still, as if enrapt. The forest of the stage, through which that helpless mortal 
girl stared blindly towards the laughter, divided in two phantom halves, moving 
away from the center, freeing the vampire to close in on her.
"And she who had been advancing towards the foot lights, saw him suddenly and 
came to a halt, making a moan like a child. Indeed, she was very like a child, 
though clearly a full-grown woman. Only a slight wrinkling of the tender flesh 
around her eyes betrayed her age. Her breasts though small were beautifully 
shaped beneath her blouse, and her hips though narrow gave her long, dusty skirt 
a sharp, sensual angularity. As she moved back from the vampire, I saw the tears 
standing in her eyes like glass in the flicker of the lights, and I felt my 
spirit contract in fear for her, and in longing. Her beauty was heartbreaking.
"Behind her, a number of painted skulls suddenly moved against the blackness, 
the figures that carried the masks invisible in their black clothes, except for 
free white hands that clasped the edge of a cape, the folds of a skirt. Vampire 
women were there, moving in with the men towards the victim, and now they all, 
one by one, thrust the masks away -so they fell in an artful pile, the sticks 
like bones, the skulls grinning into the darkness above. And there they stood, 
seven vampires, the women vampires three in number, their molded white breasts 
shining over the tight black bodices of their gowns, their hard luminescent 
faces staring with dark eyes beneath curls of black hair. Starkly beautiful, as 
they seemed to float close around that florid human figure, yet pale and cold 
compared to that sparkling golden hair, that petal-pink skin. I could hear the 
breath of the audience, the halting, the soft sighs. It was a spectacle, that 
circle of white faces pressing closer and closer, and that leading figure, that 
Gentleman Death, turning to the audience now with his hands crossed over his 
heart, his head bent in longing to elicit their sympathy: was she not 
irresistible! A murmur of accenting laughter, of sighs.
"But it was she who broke the magic silence.
" `I don't want to die . . : she whispered. Her voice was like a bell.
" `We are death,' he answered her; and from around her came the whisper, 
`Death.' She turned, tossing her hair so it became a veritable shower of gold, a 
rich and living thing over the dust off her poor clothing. `Help me?' she cried 
out softly, as if afraid even to raise her voice. `Someone . . .' she said to 
the crowd she knew must tae there. A soft laughter cane from Claudia. The girl 
on stage only vaguely understood where she was, what was happening, but knew 
infinitely more than this house of people that gaped at her.
" `I don't want to die! I don't want to!' Her delicate voice broke, her eyes 
fixed on the tall, malevolent leader vampire, that demon trickster who now 
stepped out of the circle of the others towards her.
" `We all die,' he answered her. `The one thing you share with every mortal is 
death.' His hand took in the orchestra, the distant faces of the balcony, the 
boxes.
" `No,' she protested in disbelief. `I have so many years, so many . . . .' Her 
voice was light, lilting in her pain. It made her irresistible, just as did the 
movement of her naked throat and the hand that fluttered there.
" `Years!' said the master vampire. `How do you know you have so many years? 
Death is no respecter of age! There could be a sickness in your body now, 
already devouring you from within. or, outside, a man might be waiting to kill 
you simply for your yellow hair!' And his fingers reached for it, the sound of 
his deep, preternatural voice sonorous. `Need I tell what fate may have in store 
for you?'
" `I don't care . . . I'm not afraid,' she protested, her clarion voice so 
fragile after him. `I would take my chance. . . '
" `And if you do take that chance and live, live for years, what would be your 
heritage? The humpbacked, toothless visage of old age?' And now he lifted her 
hair behind her back, exposing her pale throat. And slowly he drew the string 
from the loose gathers of her blouse. The cheap fabric opened, the sleeves 
slipping off her narrow, pink shoulders; and she clasped it, only to have him 
take her wrists and thrust them sharply away. The audience seemed to sigh in a 
body, the women behind their opera glasses, the men leaning forward in their 
chairs. I could see the cloth falling, see the pale, flawless skin pulsing with 
her heart and the tiny nipples letting the cloth slip precariously, the vampire 
holding her right wrist tightly at her side, the tears coarsing down her 
blushing cheeks, her teeth biting into the flesh of her lip. `Just as sure as 
this flesh is pink, it will turn gray, wrinkled with age,' he said.
" `Let me live, please,' she begged, her face turning away from him. `I don't 
care . . . I don't care.'
" `But then, why should you care if you die now? If these things don't frighten 
you . . . these horrors?'
"She shook her head, baffled, outsmarted, helpless. I felt the anger in my 
veins, as sure as the passion. With a bowed head she bore the whole 
responsibility for defending life, and it was unfair, monstrously unfair that 
she should have to pit logic against his for what was obvious and sacred and so 
beautifully embodied in her. But he made her speechless, made her overwhelming 
instinct seem petty, confused. I could feel her dying inside, weakening, and I 
hated him.
"The blouse slipped to her waist. A murmur moved through the titillated crowd as 
her small, round breasts stood exposed. She struggled to free her wrist, but he 
held it fast.
" `And suppose we were to let you go . . . suppose the Grim Reaper had a heart 
that could resist your beauty . . . to whom would he turn his passion? Someone 
must die in your place. Would you pick the person for us? The person to stand 
here and suffer as yoga suffer now?' He gestured to the audience. Her confusion 
was terrible. `Have you a sister . . . a mother... a child?'
" `No,' she gasped. `No . . : shaking the mane of hair.
" `Surely someone could take your place, a friend? Choose!'
" `I can't. I wouldn't. . . : She writhed in his tight grasp. The vampires 
around her looked on, still, their faces evincing no emotion, as if the 
preternatural flesh were masks. `Can't you do it?' he taunted her. And I knew, 
if she said she could, how he would only condemn her, say she was as evil as he 
for marking someone for death, say that she deserved her fate.
" `Death waits for you everywhere,' he sighed now as if he were suddenly 
frustrated. The audience could not perceive it, I could. I could see the muscles 
of his smooth face tightening. He was trying to keep her gray eyes on his eyes, 
but she looked desperately, hopefully away from him. On the warm, rising air I 
could smell the dust and perfume of her skin, hear the soft beating of her 
heart. `Unconscious death . . . the fate of all mortals.' He bent closer to her, 
musing, infatuated with her, but struggling. `Hmmm. . . . but we are conscious 
death! That would make you a bride. Do you know what it means to be loved by 
Death?' He all but kissed her face, the brilliant stain of her tears. `Do you 
know what it means to have Death know your name?'
"She looked at him, overcome with fear. And then her eyes seemed to mist over, 
her lips to go slack. She was staring past him at the figure of another vampire 
who had emerged slowly from the shadows. For a long time he had stood on the 
periphery of the gathering, his hands clasped, his large, dark eyes very still. 
His attitude was not the attitude of hunger. He did not appear rapt. But she was 
looking into his eyes row, and her pain bathed her in a beauteous light, a light 
which made her irresistibly alluring. It was 'his that held the jaded audience, 
this terrible pain. I could feel her skin, feel the small, pointed breasts, feel 
my arms caressing her. I shut my eyes against it and saw her starkly against 
that private darkness. It was what they felt all around her, this community of 
vampires. She had no chance.
"And, looking up again, I saw her shimmering in the smoky light of the 
footlamps, saw her tears like gold as soft from that other vampire who stood at 
a distance came the words . . . `No pain.'
"I could see the trickster stiffen, but no one else would see it. They would see 
only the girl's smooth, childlike face, those parted lips, slack with innocent 
wonder as she gazed at that distant vampire, hear her soft voice repeat after 
him, 'No pain?'
" `Your beauty is a gift to us.' Iris rich voice effortlessly filled the house, 
seemed to fix and subdue the mounting wave of excitement. And slightly, almost 
imperceptibly, his hand moved. The trickster was receding, becoming one of those 
patient, white faces, whose hunger and equanimity were strangely one. And 
slowly, gracefully, the other moved towards her. She was languid, her nakedness 
forgotten, those lids fluttering, a sigh escaping her moist lips. 'No pain,' she 
accented. I could hardly bear it, the sight of her yearning towards him, seeing 
her dying now, under this vampire's power. I wanted to cry out to her, to break 
her swoon. And I wanted her. Wanted her, as he was moving in on her, his hand 
out now for the drawstring of her skirt as she inclined towards him, her head 
back, the black cloth slipping over her hips, over the golden gleam of the hair 
between her legs-a child's down, that delicate curl-the skirt dropping to her 
feet. And this vampire opened his arms, his back to the flickering footlights, 
his auburn hair seeming to tremble as the gold of her hair fell around his black 
coat. `No pain . . . no pain . . .' he was whispering to her, and she was giving 
herself over.
"And now, turning her slowly to the side so that they could all see her serene 
face, he was lifting her, her back arching as her naked breasts touched his 
buttons, her pale arms enfolded his neck. She stiffened, cried out as he sank 
his teeth, and her face was still as the dark theater reverberated with shared 
passion. Isis white hand shone on her florid buttocks, her hair dusting it, 
stroking it. He lifted her off the boards as he drank, her throat gleaming 
against his white cheek. I felt weak, dazed, hunger rising in me, knotting my 
heart, my veins. I felt my hand gripping the brass bar of the box, tighter, 
until I could feel the metal creaking in its joints. And that soft, wrenching 
sound which none of those mortals might hear seemed somehow to hook me to the 
solid place where I was.
"I bowed my head; I wanted to shut my eyes. The air seemed fragrant with her 
salted skin, and close and hot and sweet. Around her the other vampires drew in, 
the white hand that held her tight quivered, and the auburn-haired vampire let 
her go, turning her, displaying her, her head fallen back as he gave her over, 
one of those starkly beautiful vampire women rising behind her, cradling her, 
stroking her as she bent to drink. They were all about her now, as she was 
passed from one to another and to another, before the enthralled crowd, her head 
thrown forward over the shoulder of a vampire man, the nape of her neck as 
enticing as the small buttocks or the flawless skin of her long thighs, the 
tender creases behind her limply bent knees.
"I was sitting back in the chair, my mouth full of the taste of her, my veins in 
torment. And in the corner of my eyes was that auburn-haired vampire who had 
conquered her, standing apart as he had been before, his dark eyes seeming to 
pick me from the darkness, seeming to fix on me over the currents of warm air.
"One by one the vampires were withdrawing. The painted forest came back, sliding 
soundlessly into place. Until the mortal girl, frail and very white, lay naked 
in that mysterious wood, nestled in the silk of a black bier as if on the floor 
of the forest itself; and the music had begun again, eerie and alarming, growing 
louder as the lights grew dimmer. All the vampires were gone, except the 
trickster, who had gathered his scythe from the shadows and also his hand-held 
mask. And he crouched near the sleeping girl as the lights slowly faded, and the 
music alone had power and force in the enclosing dark. And then that died also.
"For a moment, the entire crowd was utterly still.
"Then applause began here and there and suddenly united everyone around us. The 
lights rose in the sconces on the walls and heads turned to one another, 
conversation erupting all round. A woman rising in the middle of a row to pull 
her fox fur sharply from the .chair, though no one had yet made way for her; 
someone else pushing out quickly to the carpeted aisle; and the whole body was 
on its feet as if driven to the exits.
"But then the hum became the comfortable, jaded hum of the sophisticated and 
perfumed crowd that had filled the lobby and the vault of the theater before. 
The spell was broken. The doors were flung open on the fragrant rain, the clop 
of horses' hooves, and voices calling for taxis. Down in the sea of slightly 
askew chairs, a white glove gleamed on a green sill cushion.
"I sat watching, listening, one hand shielding my lowered face from anyone and 
no one, my elbow resting on the rail, the passion in me subsiding, the taste of 
the girl on my lips. It was as though on the smell of the rain came her perfume 
still, and in the empty theater I could hear the throb of her beating heart. I 
sucked in my breath, tasted the rain, and glimpsed Claudia sitting infinitely 
still, her gloved hands in her lap.
"There was a bitter taste in my mouth, and confusion. And then I saw a lone 
usher moving on the aisle below, righting the chairs, reaching for the scattered 
programs that littered the carpet. I was aware that this ache in me, this 
confusion, this blinding passion which only let me go with a stubborn slowness 
would be obliterated if I were to drop down to one of those curtained archways 
beside him and draw him up fast in the darkness and take him as that girl was 
taken. I wanted to do it, and I wanted nothing. Claudia said near my bowed ear, 
`Patience, Louis. Patience'
"I opened my eyes. Someone was near, on the periphery of my vision; someone who 
had outsmarted my hearing, my keen anticipation, which penetrated like a sharp 
antenna even this distraction, or so I thought. But there he was, soundless, 
beyond the curtained entrance of the box, that vampire with the auburn hair, 
that detached one; standing on the carpeted stairway looking at us. I knew him 
now to be, as I'd suspected, the vampire who had given me the card admitting us 
to the theater. Armand.
"He would have startled me, except for his stillness, the remote dreamy quality 
of his expression. It seemed he'd been standing against that wall for the 
longest time, and betrayed no sign of change as we looked at him, then came 
towards him. Had he not so completely absorbed me, I would have been relieved he 
was not the tall, black-haired one; but I didn't think of this. Now his eyes 
moved languidly over Claudia with no tribute whatsoever to the human habit of 
disguising the stare. I placed my hand on Claudia's shoulder. `We've been 
searching for you a very long time,' I said to him, my heart growing calmer, as 
if his calm were drawing off my trepidation, my care, like the sea drawing 
something into itself from the land. I cannot exaggerate this quality in him. 
Yet I can't describe it and couldn't then; and the fact that my mind sought to 
describe it even to myself unsettled me. He gave me the very feeling that he 
knew what I was doing, and his still posture and his deep, brown eyes seemed to 
say there was no use in what I was thinking, or particularly the words I was 
struggling to form now. Claudia said nothing.
"He moved away from the wall and began to walk down the stairs, while at the 
same time he made a gesture that welcomed us and bade us follow; but all this 
was fluid and fast. My gestures were the caricature of human gestures compared 
to his. He opened a door in the lower wall and admitted us to the rooms below 
the theater, his feet only brushing the stone stairway as we descended, his back 
to us with complete trust.
"And now we entered what appeared to be a vast subterranean ballroom, carved, as 
it were, out of a cellar more ancient than the building overhead. Above us, the 
door that he had opened fell shut, and the light died away before I could get a 
fair impression of the room. I heard the rustle of his garments in the dark and 
then the sharp explosion of a match. His face appeared like a great flame over 
the match. And then a figure moved into the light beside him, a young boy, who 
brought him a candle. The sight of the boy brought back to me in a shock the 
teasing pleasure of the naked woman on the stage, her prone body, the pulsing 
blood. And he turned and gazed at me now, much in the manner of the 
auburn-haired vampire, who had lit the candle and whispered to him, `Go.' The 
light expanded to the distant walls, and the vampire held the light up and moved 
along the wall, beckoning us both to follow.
"I could see a world of frescoes and murals surrounded us, their colors deep and 
vibrant above the dancing flame, and gradually the theme and content beside us 
came clear. It was the terrible `Triumph of Death' by Breughel, painted on such 
a massive scale that all the multitude of ghastly figures towered over us in the 
gloom, those ruthless skeletons ferrying the helpless dead in a fetid moat or 
pulling a cart of human skulls, beheading an outstretched corpse or hanging 
humans from the gallows. A bell tolled over the endless hell of scorched and 
smoking land, towards which great armies of men came with the hideous, mindless 
march of soldiers to a massacre. I turned away, but the auburn-haired one 
touched my hand and led me further along the wall to see `The Fall of the 
Angels' slowly materializing with the damned being driven from the celestial 
heights into a lurid chaos of feasting monsters. So vivid, so perfect was it, I 
shuddered. The hand that had touched me did the same again, and I stood still 
despite it, deliberately looking above to the very height of the mural, where I 
could make out of the shadows two beautiful angels with trumpets to their lips. 
And for a second the spell was broken. I had the strong sense of the first 
evening I had entered Notre-Dame, but then that was gore, like something 
gossamer and precious snatched away from me.
"The candle rose. And horrors rose all around me: the dumbly passive and, 
degraded damned of Bosch, the bloated coned corpses of Traini, the monstrous 
horsemen of Durer, and blown out of all endurable scale a promenade of medieval 
woodcut, emblem, and engraving. The very ceiling writhed with skeletons and 
moldering dead, with demons and the instruments of pain, as if this were the 
cathedral of death itself.
"Where we stood finally in the center of the room, the candle seemed to pull the 
images to life everywhere around us. Delirium threatened, that awful shifting of 
the room began, that sense of falling. I reached out for Claudia's hand. She 
stood musing, her face passive, her eyes distant when I looked to her, as if 
she'd have me let her alone; and then her feet shot off from me with a rapid 
tapping on the stone floor that echoed all along the walls, like fingers tapping 
on my temples, on my skull. I held my temples, staring dumbly at the floor in 
search of shelter, as if to lift my eyes would force me to look on some wretched 
suffering I would not, could not endure. Then again I saw the vampire's face 
floating in his flame, his ageless eyes circled in dark lashes. His lips were 
very still, but as I stared at him he seemed to smile without making even the 
slightest movement. I watched him all the harder, convinced it was some powerful 
illusion I could penetrate with keen attention; and the more I watched, the more 
he seemed to smile and finally to be animated with a soundless whispering, 
musing, singing. I could hear it like something curling in the dark, as 
wallpaper curls in the blast of a fire or paint peels from the face of a burning 
doll. I had the urge to reach for him, to shake him violently so that his still 
face would move, admit to this soft singing; and suddenly I found him pressed 
against me, his arm around my chest, his lashes so close I could see them matted 
and gleaming above the incandescent orb of his eye, his soft, tasteless breath 
against my skin. It was delirium.
"I moved to get away from him, and yet I was drawn to him and I didn't move at 
all, his arm exerting its firm pressure, his candle blazing now against my eye, 
so that I felt the warmth of it; all my cold flesh yearned for that warmth, but 
suddenly I waved to snuff it but couldn't find it, and all I saw was his radiant 
face, as I had never seen Lestat's face, white and poreless and sinewy and male. 
The other vampire. All other vampires. An infinite procession of my own kind.
"The moment ended.
"I found myself with my hand outstretched, touching his face; but he was a 
distance away from me, as if he'd never moved near me, making no attempt to 
brush my hand away. I drew back, flushed, stunned.
"Far away in the Paris night a bell chimed, the dull, golden circles of sound 
seeming to penetrate the walls, the timbers that carried that sound down into 
the earth like great organ pipes. Again came that whispering, that inarticulate 
singing. And through the gloom I saw that mortal boy watching me, and I smelled 
the hot aroma of his flesh. The vampire's facile hand beckoned him, and he came 
towards me, his eyes fearless and exciting, and he drew up to me in the 
candlelight and put his arms around my shoulders.
"Never had I felt this, never had I experienced it, this yielding of a conscious 
mortal. But before I could push him away for his own sake, I saw the bluish 
bruise on his tender neck. He was offering it to me. He was pressing the length 
of his body against me now, and I felt the hard strength of his sex beneath his 
clothes pressing against my leg. A wretched gasp escaped my lips, but he bent 
close, his lips on what must have been so cold, so lifeless for him; and I sank 
my teeth into his skin, my body rigid, that hard sex driving against me, and I 
lifted him in passion off the floor. Wave after wave of his beating heart passed 
into me as, weightless, I rocked with him, devouring him, his ecstasy, his 
conscious pleasure.
"Then, weak and gasping, I saw him at a distance from me, my arms empty, my 
mouth still flooded with the taste of his blood. He lay against that 
auburnhaired vampire, his arm about the vampire's waist, and he gazed at me in 
that same pacific manner of the vampire, his eyes misted over and weak from the 
loss of life. I remember moving mutely forward, drawn to him and seemingly 
unable to control it, that gaze taunting me, that conscious life defying me; he 
should die and would not die; he would live on, comprehending, surviving that 
intimacy! I turned. The host of vampires moved in the shadows, their candles 
whipped and fleeting on the cool air; and above them loomed a great broadcast of 
ink-drawn figures: the sleeping corpse of a woman ravaged by a vulture with a 
human face; a naked man bound hand and foot to a tree, beside him hanging the 
torso of another, his severed arms tied still to another branch, and on a spike 
this dead man's staring head.
"Me singing came again, that thin, ethereal singing. Slowly the hunger in me 
subsided, obeyed, but my head throbbed and the flames of the candles seemed to 
merge in burnished circles of light. Someone touched me suddenly, pushed me 
roughly, so that I almost lost my balance, and when I straitened I saw the thin, 
angular face of the trickster vampire I despised. He reached out for me with his 
white hands. But the other one, the distant one, moved forward suddenly and 
stood between us. It seemed he struck the other vampire, that I saw him move, 
and then again I did not see him move; both stood still like statues, eyes fixed 
on one another, and time passed like wave after wave of water rolling back from 
a still beach. I cannot say how long we stood there, the three of us in those 
shadows, and how utterly still they seemed to me, only the shimmering flames 
seeming to have life behind them. Then I remember floundering along the wall and 
finding a large oak chair into which I all but collapsed. It seemed Claudia was 
near and speaking to someone in a hushed but sweet voice. My forehead teemed 
with blood, with heat.
" `Come with me,' said the auburn-haired vampire. I was searching his face for 
the movement of his lips that must have preceded the sound, yet it was so 
hopelessly long after the sound. And then we were walking, the three of us, down 
a long stone stairway deeper beneath the city, Claudia ahead of us, her shadow 
long against the wall. The air grew cool and refreshing with the fragrance of 
water, and I could see the droplets bleeding through the stones like beads of 
gold in the light of the vampire's candle.
"It was a small chamber we entered, a fire burning in a deep fireplace cut into 
the stone wall. A bed lay at the other end, fitted into the rock and enclosed 
with two brass gates. At first I saw these things clearly, and saw the long wall 
of books opposite the fireplace and the wooden desk that was against it, and the 
coffin to the other side. But then the room began to waver, and the 
auburn-haired vampire put his hands on my shoulders and guided me down into a 
leather chair. The fire was intensely hot against my legs, but this felt good to 
me, sharp and clear, something to draw me out of this confusion. I sat back, my 
eyes only half open, and tried to see again what was about me. It was as if that 
distant bed were a stage and on the linen pillows of the little stage lay that 
boy, his black hair parted in the middle and curling about his ears, so that he 
looked now in his dreamy, fevered state like one of those lithe androgynous 
creatures of a Botticelli painting; and beside him, nestled against him, her 
tiny white hand stark against his ruddy flesh, lay Claudia, her face buried in 
his neck. The masterful auburn-haired vampire looked on, his hands clasped in 
front of him; and when Claudia rose now, the boy shuddered. The vampire picked 
her up, gently, as I might pick her up, her hands finding a hold on his neck, 
her eyes half shut with the swoon, her lips rouged with blood. He set her gently 
on the desk, and she lay back against the leatherbound books, her hands falling 
gracefully into the lap of her lavender dress. The gates closed on the boy and, 
burying his face in the pillows, he slept.
"There was something disturbing to me in the room, and g didn't know what it 
was. I didn't in truth know what was wrong with me, only that I'd been drawn 
forcefully either by myself or someone else from two fierce, consuming states: 
an absorption with those grim paintings, and the kill to which I'd abandoned 
myself, obscenely, in the eyes of others.
"I didn't know what it was that threatened me now, what it was that my mind 
sought escape from. I kept looking at Claudia, the way she lay against the 
books, the way she sat amongst the objects of the desk, the polished white 
skull, the candle-holder, the open parchment book whose hand-painted script 
gleamed in the light; and then above her there emerged into focus the lacquered 
and shimmering painting of a medieval devil, horned and hoofed, his bestial 
figure looming over a coven of worshipping witches. Her head was just beneath 
it, the loose curling strands of her hair just stroking it; and she watched the 
brown-eyed vampire with wide, wondering eyes. I wanted to pick her up suddenly, 
and frightfully, horribly, I saw her in my kindled imagination flopping like a 
doll. I was gazing at the devil, that monstrous face preferable to the sight of 
her in her eerie stillness.
" `You won't awaken the boy if you speak,' said the brown-eyed vampire. `You've 
come from so far, you've traveled so long.' And gradually my confusion subsided, 
as if smoke were rising and moving away on a current of fresh air. And I lay 
awake and very calm, looking at him as he sat in the opposite chair. Claudia, 
too, looked at him. And he looked from one to the other of us, his smooth face 
and pacific eyes very like they'd been all along, as though there had never been 
any change in him at all.
"'My name is Armand,' he said. 'I sent Santiago to give you the invitation. I 
know your names. I welcome you to my house'
"I gathered my strength to speak, my voice sounding strange to me when I told 
him that we had feared we were alone.
" But how did you come into existence?' he asked. Claudia's hand rose ever so 
slightly from her lap, her eyes moving mechanically from his face to mine. I saw 
this and knew that he must have seen it, and yet he gave no sign. I knew at once 
what she meant to tell me. 'You don't want to answer,' said Armand, his voice 
low and even more measured than Claudia's voice, far less human than my own. I 
sensed myself slipping away again into contemplation of that voice and those 
eyes, from which I had to draw myself up with great effort.
" `Are you the leader of this group?' I asked him.
"`Not in the way you mean leader,' he answered. But if there were a leader here, 
I would be that one.'
"'I haven't come . . . you'll forgive me . . . to talk of how I came into being. 
Because that's no mystery to me, it presents no question. So if you have no 
power to which I might be required to render respect, I don't wish to talk of 
those things:
"'If I told you I did have such power, would you respect it?' he asked.
"I wish I could describe his manner of speaking, how each time he spoke he 
seemed to arise out of a state of contemplation very like that state into which 
I felt I was drifting, from which it took so much to wrench myself; and yet he 
never moved, and seemed at all times alert. This distracted me while at the same 
time I was powerfully attracted by it, as I was by this room, its simplicity, 
its rich, w combination of essentials: the books, the desk, the two chairs by 
the fire, the coffin, the pictures. The luxury of those rooms in the hotel 
seemed vulgar, but more than that, meaningless, beside this room. I understood 
all of it except for the mortal boy, the sleeping boy, whom I didn't understand 
at all.
"'I'm not certain,' I said, unable to keep my eyes off that awful medieval 
Satan. 'I would have to know from what . . . from whom it comes. Whether it came 
from other vampires . . . or elsewhere'
"'Elsewhere . . ' he said. 'What is elsewhere?
"'That?' I pointed to the medieval picture.
" 'That is a picture,' he said.
"'Nothing more?'
"'Nothing more.'
"'Then Satan . . . some satanic power doesn't give you your power here, either 
as leader or as vampire?'
"'No,' he said calmly, so calmly it was impossible for me to know what he 
thought of my questions, if he thought of them at all in the manner which I knew 
to be thinking.
" `And the other vampires?'
" "No,' he said.
" `Then we are not . . .' I sat forward. `. . . the children of Satan?'
" `How could we be the children of Satan?' he asked. `Do you believe that Satan 
made this world around you?'
" `No, I believe that God made it, if anyone made it. But He also must have made 
Satan, and I want to know if we are his children!'
" `Exactly, and consequently if you believe God made Satan, you must realize 
that all Satan's power comes from God and that Satan is simply God's child, and 
that we are God's children also. There are no children of Satan, really.'
"I couldn't disguise my feelings at this. I sat back against the leather, 
looking at that small woodcut of the devil, released for the moment from any 
sense of obligation to Armand's presence, lost in my thoughts, in the undeniable 
implications of his simple logic.
" 'But why does this concern you? Surely what I say doesn't surprise you,' he 
said. `Why do you let it affect you?'
"'Let me explain,' I began. `I know that you're a master vampire. I respect you. 
But I'm incapable of your detachment. I know what it is, and I do not possess it 
and I doubt that I ever will. I accept this.'
" `I understand,' he nodded. `I saw you in the theater, your suffering, your 
sympathy with that girl. I saw your sympathy for Denis when I offered him to 
you; you die when you kill, as if you feel that you deserve to die, and you 
stint on nothing. But why, with this passion and this sense of justice, do you 
wish to call yourself the child of Satan!'
" `I'm evil, evil as any vampire who ever lived! I've killed over and over and 
will do it again. I took that boy, Denis, when you gave him to me, though I was 
incapable of knowing whether he would survive or not.'
" 'Why does that make you as evil as any vampire? Aren't there gradations of 
evil? Is evil a great perilous gulf into which one falls with the first sin, 
plummeting to the depth?'
" `Yes, I think it is,' I said to him. `It's not logical, as you would make it 
sound. But it's that dark, that empty. And it is without consolation.'
" `But you're not being fair,' he said with the first glimmer of expression in 
his voice. `Surely you attribute great degrees and variations to goodness. There 
is the goodness of the child which is innocence, and then there is the goodness 
of the monk who has given up everything to others and lives a life of 
self-deprivation and service. The goodness of saints, the goodness of good 
housewives. Are all these the same?'
" `No. But equally and infinitely different from evil.' I answered.
"I didn't know I thought these things. I spoke them now as my thoughts. And they 
were my most profound feelings taking a shape they could never have taken had I 
not spoken them, had I not thought them out this way in conversation with 
another. I thought myself then possessed of a passive mind, in a sense. I mean 
that my mind could only pull itself together, formulate thought out of the 
muddle of longing and pain, when it was touched by another mind; fertilized by 
it; deeply excited by that other mind and driven to form conclusions. I felt now 
the rarest, most acute alleviation of loneliness. I could easily visualize and 
suffer that moment years before in another century, when I had stood at the foot 
of Babette's stairway, and feel the perpetual metallic frustration of years with 
Lestat; and then that passionate and doomed affection for Claudia which made 
loneliness retreat behind the soft indulgence of the senses, the same senses 
that longed for the kill. And I saw the desolate mountaintop in eastern Europe 
where I had confronted that mindless vampire and killed him in the monastery 
ruins. And it was as if the great feminine longing of my mind were being 
awakened again to be satisfied. And this I felt despite my own words: `But it's 
that dark, that empty. And it is without consolation.'
"I looked at Armand, at his large brown eyes in that taut, timeless face, 
watching me again like a painting; and I felt the slow shifting of the physical 
world I'd felt in the painted ballroom, the pull of my old delirium, the 
wakening of a need so terrible that the very promise of its fulfillment 
contained the unbearable possibility of disappointment. And yet there was the 
question, the awful, ancient, hounding question of evil.
"I think I put my hands to my head as mortals do when so deeply troubled that 
they instinctively cover the face, reach for the brain as if they could reach 
through the skull and massage the living organ out of its agony.
" `And how is this evil achieved?' he asked. `How does one fall from grace and 
become in one instant as evil as the snob tribunal of the Revolution or the most 
cruel of the Roman emperors? Does one merely have to miss Mass on Sunday, or 
bite down on the Communion Host? (r)r steal a loaf of bread . . . or sleep with 
a neighbor's wife?'
" `No . . . .' I shook my head. `No.'
" `But if evil is without gradation, and it does exist, this state of evil, then 
only one sin is needed. Isn't that what you are saying? That God exists and. . .
" `I don't know if God exists,' I said. `And for all I do know . . . He doesn't 
exist.'
" `Then no sin matters,' he said. `No sin. achieves evil.'
" `That's not true. Because if God doesn't exist we are the creatures of highest 
consciousness in the universe. We alone understand the passage of time and the 
value off every minute of human life. And what constitutes evil, real evil, is 
the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would have died tomorrow or the 
day after or eventually . . . it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, 
this life . . . every second of it . . . is all we have.'
"He sat back, as if for the moment stopped, his large eyes narrowing, then 
fixing on the depths of the fire. This was the first time since he had come for 
me that he had looked away from me, and I found myself looking at him unwatched. 
For a long time he sat in this manner and I could all but feel his thoughts, as 
if they were palpable in the air like smoke. Not read them, you understand, but 
feel the power of them. It seemed he possessed an aura and even though his face 
was very young, which I knew meant nothing, he appeared infinitely old, wise. I 
could not define it, because I could not explain how the youthful lines of his 
face, how his eyes expressed innocence and this age and experience at the same 
time.
"He rose now and looked at Claudia, his hands loosely clasped behind his back. 
Her silence all this time had been understandable to me. These were not her 
questions, yet she was fascinated with him and was waiting for him and no doubt 
learning from him all the while that he spoke to me. But I understood something 
else now as they looked at each other. He had moved to his feet with a body 
totally at his command, devoid of the habit of human gesture, gesture rooted in 
necessity, ritual, fluctuation of mind; and his stillness now was unearthly. And 
she, as I'd never seen before, possessed the same stillness. And they were 
gazing at each other with a preternatural understanding from which I was simply 
excluded.
"I was something whirling and vibrating to them, as mortals were to me. And I 
knew when he turned towards me again that he'd come to understand she did not 
believe or share my concept of evil.
"His speech commenced without the slightest warning. `This is the only real evil 
left,' he said to the flames.
" `Yes,' I answered, feeling that all-consuming subject alive again, 
obliterating all concerns as it always had for me.
" `It's true,' he said, shocking me, deepening my sadness, my despair.
" `Then God does not exist . . . you have no knowledge of His existence?'
"'None,' he said.
" `No knowledge!' I said it again, unafraid of my simplicity, my miserable human 
pain.
" `None.'
" `And no vampire here has discourse with God or with the devil!'
" `No vampire that I've ever known,' he said, musing, the fire dancing in his 
eyes. `And as far as I know today, after four hundred years, I am the oldest 
living vampire in the world.'
"I stared at him, astonished.
"Then it began to sink in. It was as I'd always feared, and it was as lonely, it 
was as totally without hope. Things would go on as they had before, on and on. 
My search was over. I sat back listlessly watching those licking flames.
"It was futile to leave him to continue it, futile to travel the world only to 
hear again the same story. `Four hundred years'-I think I repeated the words 
`four hundred years.' I remember staring at the fire. There was a log falling 
very slowly in the fire, drifting downwards in a process that would take it the 
night, and it was pitted with tiny holes where some substance that had larded it 
through and through had burned away fast, and in each of these tiny holes there 
danced a flame amid the larger flames: and all of these tiny flames with their 
black mouths seemed to me faces that made a chorus; and the chorus sang without 
singing. The chorus had no need of singing; in one breath in the fire, which was 
continuous, it made its soundless song.
"All at once Armand moved in a loud rustling of garments, a descent of crackling 
shadow and light that left him kneeling at my feet, his hands outstretched 
holding my head, his eyes burning.
" `This evil, this concept, it comes from disappointment, from bitterness! Don't 
you see? Children of Satan! Children of God! Is this the only question you bring 
to me, is this the only power that obsesses you, so that you must make us gods 
and devils yourself when the only power that exists is inside ourselves? How 
could you believe in these old fantastical lies, these myths, these emblems of 
the supernatural?' He snatched the devil from above Claudia's still countenance 
so swiftly that I couldn't see the gesture, only the demon leering before me and 
then crackling in the flames.
"Something was broken inside me when he said this; something ripped aside, so 
that a torrent of feeling became one with my muscles in every limb. I was on my 
feet now, backing away from him.
" `Are you mad?' I asked, astonished at my own anger, my own despair. `We stand 
here, the two of us, immortal, ageless, rising nightly to feed that immortality 
on human blood; and there on your desk against the knowledge of the ages sits a 
flawless child as demonic as ourselves; and you ask me how I could believe I 
would find a meaning in the supernatural! I tell you, after seeing what I have 
become, I could damn well believe anything! Couldn't you? And believing thus, 
being thus confounded, I can now accept the most fantastical truth of all: that 
there is no meaning to any of this!'
"I backed towards the door, away from his astonished face, his hand hovering 
before his lips, the finger curling to dig into his palm. `Don't! Come back . . 
: he whispered.
" `No, not now. Let me go. Just a while . . . let me go. . . . Nothing's 
changed; it's all the same. Let that sink into me . . . just let me go.'
"I looked back before I shut the door. Claudia's face was turned towards me, 
though she sat as before, her hands clasped on her knee. She made a gesture 
then, subtle as her smile, which was tinged with the faintest sadness, that I 
was to go on.
"It was my desire to escape the theater then entirely, to find the streets of 
Paris and wander, letting the vast accumulation of shocks gradually wear away. 
But, as I groped along the stone passage of the lower cellar, I became confused. 
I was perhaps incapable of exerting my own will. It seemed more than ever absurd 
to me that Lestat should have died, if in fact he had; and looking back on him, 
as it seemed I was always doing, I saw him more kindly than before. Lost like 
the rest of us. Not the jealous protector of any knowledge he was afraid to 
share. He -knew nothing. There was nothing to know.
"Only, that was not quite the thought that was gradually coming clear to me. I 
had hated him for all the wrong reasons; yes, that was true. But I did not fully 
understand it yet. Confounded, I found myself sitting finally on those dark 
steps, the light from the ballroom throwing my own shadow on the rough floor, my 
hands holding my head, a weariness overcoming me. My mind said, Sleep. But more 
profoundly, my mind said, Bream. And yet I made no move to return to the Hotel 
Saint-Gabriel, which seemed a very secure and airy place to me now, a place of 
subtle and luxurious mortal consolation where I might lie in a chair of puce 
velvet, put one foot on an ottoman and watch the fire lick the marble tile, 
looking for all the world to myself in the long mirrors like a thoughtful human. 
Flee to that, I thought, flee all that is pulling you. And again came that 
thought: I have wronged Lestat, I have hated him for all the wrong reasons. I 
whispered it now, trying to withdraw it from the dark, inarticulate pool of my 
mind, and the whispering made a scratching sound in the stone vault of the 
stairs.
"But then a voice came softly to me on the air, too faint for mortals: `How is 
this so? How did you wrong him?'
"I turned round so sharp that my breath left me. A vampire sat near me, so near 
as to almost brush my shoulder with the tip of his boot, his legs drawn up close 
to him, his hands clasped around them. For -a moment I thought my eyes deceived 
me. It was the trickster vampire, whom Armand had called Santiago.
"Yet nothing in his manner indicated his former self, that devilish, hateful 
self that I had seen, even only a few hours ago when he had reached out for me 
and Armand had struck him. He was staring at me over his drawn-up knees, his 
hair disheveled, his mouth slack and without cunning.
" `It makes no difference to anyone else,' I said to him, the fear in me 
subsiding.
" `But you said a name; I heard you say a name,' he said.
" 'A name I don't want to say again,' I answered, looking away from him. I could 
see now how he'd fooled me, why his shadow had not fallen over mine; he crouched 
in my shadow. The vision of him slithering down those stone stairs to sit behind 
me was slightly disturbing. Everything about him was disturbing, and
I reminded myself that he could in no way be trusted. It seemed to me then that 
Armand, with his hypnotic power, aimed in some way for the maximum truth in 
presentation of himself: he lead drawn out of me without words my state of mind. 
But this vampire was a liar. And I could feel his power, a crude, pounding power 
that was almost as strong as Arm,-,P-Xs.
" `You come to Paris in search of us, and then you sit alone on. the stairs . . 
: he said, in a conciliatory tone. `Why don't you come up with us? Why don't you 
speak to us and talk to us of this person whose name you spoke; I know who it 
was, I know the name.'
" `You don't know, couldn't know. It was a mortal,' I said now, more front 
instinct than conviction. Time thought of Lestat disturbed me, the thought that 
this creature should know of Lestat's death.
" `You care here to ponder mortals, justice done to mortals?' he asked; but 
there was no reproach or mockery in his tone.
" `I came to be alone, let me not offend you. It's a fact,' I murmured.
"'But alone in this frame of mind, when you don't even hear my steps. . . I like 
you. I want you to come upstairs' And as he said this, he slowly pulled me to my 
feet beside him.
"At that moment the door of Armand's cell threw a long light into the passage. I 
heard him conning, and Santiago let me go. I was standing there baffled. Armand 
appeared at the foot of the steps, with Claudia in lids arms. She had that same 
dull expression on her face which she'd had all during my talk with Armand. It 
was as if she were deep in her own considerations and saw nothing around her; 
and I remember noting this, though not knowing what to think of it, that it 
persisted even now. I took her quickly from Armand, and felt her soft limbs 
against me as if we were both in. the coffin, yielding to that paralytic sleep.
"And then, with a powerful thrust of his arm, Armand pushed Santiago away. It 
seemed he fell backwards, but was up again only to have Armand gull him towards 
the head of the steps, all of this happening so swiftly I could only see the 
blur of their garments and hear the scratching of their boots. Then Armand stood 
alone at the head of the steps, and I went upward towards him.
" 'You cannot safely leave the theater tonight,' he whispered to me. 'He is 
suspicious of you. And my having brought you here, he feels that it is his right 
to know you better. Our security depends on it.' He guided me slowly into the 
ballroom. But then he turned to me and pressed his lips almost to my ear: `I 
must warn you. Answer no questions. Ask and you open one bud of truth for 
yourself after another. But give nothing, nothing, especially concerning your 
origin.'
"He moved away from us now, but beckoning for us to follow ' into the gloom 
where the others were gathered, clustered like remote marble statues, their 
faces and hands all too like our own. I had the strong sense then of how we were 
all made from the same material, a thought which had only occurred to me 
occasionally in all the long years in New Orleans; and it disturbed me, 
particularly when I saw one or more of the others reflected in the long mirrors 
that broke the density of those awful murals.
"Claudia seemed to awaken as I found one of the carved oak chairs and settled 
into it. She leaned towards me and said something strangely incoherent, which 
seemed to mean that I must do as Armand said: say nothing of our origin. I 
wanted to talk with her now, but I could see that tall vampire, Santiago, 
watching us, his eyes moving slowly from us to Armand. Several women vampires 
had gathered around Armand, and I felt a tumult of feeling as I saw them put 
their arms around his waist. And what appalled me as I watched was not their 
exquisite form, their delicate features and graceful hands made hard as glass by 
vampire nature, or their bewitching eyes which fixed on me now in a sudden 
silence; what appalled me was my own fierce jealousy. I was afraid when I saw 
them so close to him, afraid when he turned and kissed them each. And, as he 
brought them near to me now, I was unsure and confused.
"Estelle and Celeste are the names I remember, porcelain beauties, who fondled 
Claudia with the license of the blind, running their hands over her radiant 
hair, touching even her lips, while she, her eyes still misty and distant, 
tolerated it all, knowing what I also knew and what they seemed unable to grasp: 
that a woman's mind as sharp and distinct as their own lived within that small 
body. It made me wonder as I watched her turning about for them, holding out her 
lavender skirts and smiling coldly at their adoration, how many times I must 
have forgotten, spoken to her as if she were the child, fondled her too freely, 
brought her into my arms with an adult's abandon. My mind went in three 
directions: that last night in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, which seemed a year ago, 
when she talked of love with rancor; my reverberating shock at Armand's 
revelations or lack of them; and a quiet absorption of the vampires around me, 
who whispered in the dark beneath the grotesque murals. For I could learn much 
from the vampires without ever asking a question, and vampire life in Paris was 
all that I'd feared it to be, all that the little stage in the theater above had 
indicated it was.
"'The dim lights of the house were mandatory, and the paintings appreciated in 
full, added to almost nightly when some vampire brought a new engraving or 
picture by a contemporary artist into the house. Celeste, with her cold hand on 
my arm, spoke with contempt of men as the originators of these pictures, and 
Estelle, who now held Claudia on her lap, emphasized to me, the naive colonial, 
that vampires had not made such horrors themselves but merely collected them, 
confirming over and over that men were capable of far greater evil than 
vampires.
"'There is evil in making such paintings?' Claudia asked softly in her toneless 
voice.
"Celeste threw back her black curls and laughed.
" `What can be imagined can be done,' slue answered quickly, but her eyes 
reflected a certain contained hostility. `Of course, we strive to rival men in 
kills of all kinds, do we riot!~ Sloe leaned forward arid touched Claudia's 
knee. But Claudia merely looked at her, watching her laugh nervously and 
continue. Santiago drew near, to bring up the subject of our rooms in the Hotel 
Saint-Gabriel; frightfully unsafe, he said, with an exaggerated stage gesture of 
the hands. And he showed a knowledge of those rooms which was amazing. He knew 
the chest in which we slept; it struck him as vulgar. `Come here!' he said to 
me, with that near childlike simplicity he had evinced on the steps. `Live with 
us and such disguise is unnecessary. We have our guards. And tell me, where do 
you come from!' he said, dropping to his knees, his hand on the arm of my chair. 
`Your voice, I know that accent; speak again.'
"I was vaguely horrified at the thought of having an accent to my French, but 
this wasn't my immediate concern. He was strong-willed and blatantly possessive, 
throwing back at me an image of that possessiveness which was flowering in me 
more fully every moment. And meanwhile, the vampires around us talked on, 
Estelle explaining that black was the color for a vampire's clothes, that 
Claudia's lovely pastel dress was beautiful but tasteless. `We blend with the 
night,' she said. `We have a funereal gleam.' And now, bending her cheek next to 
Claudia's cheek, she laughed to soften her criticism; and Celeste laughed, and 
Santiago laughed, and the whole room seemed alive with unearthly tinkling 
laughter, preternatural voices echoing against the painted walls, rippling the 
feeble candle flames. `Ah, but to cover up such curls,' said Celeste, now 
playing with Claudia's golden hair. And I realized what must have been obvious: 
that all of them had dyed their hair black, but for Armand; and it was that, 
along with the black clothes, that added to the disturbing impression that we 
were statues from the same chisel and paint brush. I cannot emphasize too much 
how disturbed I was by that impression. It seemed to stir something in me deep 
inside, something I couldn't fully grasp.
"I found myself wandering away from them to one of the narrow mirrors and 
watching them all over my shoulder. Claudia gleamed like a jewel in their midst; 
so would that mortal boy who slept below. The realization was coming to me that 
I found them dull in some awful way: dull, dull everywhere that I looked, their 
sparkling vampire eyes repetitious, their wit like a dull, brass bell.
"Only the knowledge I needed distracted me from these thoughts. `The vampires of 
eastern Europe . .
Claudia was saying. `Monstrous creatures, what have they to do with us?'
" `Revenants,' Armand answered softly over the distance that separated them, 
playing on faultless preternatural ears to hear what was more muted than a 
whisper. The room fell silent. `Their blood is different, vile. They increase as 
we do but without skill or care. In the old days-' Abruptly he stopped. I could 
see his face in the mirror. It was strangely rigid.
" `Oh, but tell us about the old days,' said Celeste, her voice shrill, at human 
pitch. There was something vicious in her tone.
"And now Santiago took up the same baiting manner. `Yes, tell us of the covens, 
and the herbs that would render us invisible.' He smiled. `And the burnings at 
the stake!'
"Armand fixed his eyes on Claudia. `Beware those monsters,' he said, and 
calculatedly his eyes passed over Santiago and then Celeste. `Those revenants. 
They will attack you as if you were human'
"Celeste shuddered, uttering something in contempt, an aristocrat speaking of 
vulgar cousins who bear the same name. But I was watching Claudia because it 
seemed her eyes were misted again as before. She looked away from Armand 
suddenly.
"The voices of the others rose again, affected party voices, as they conferred 
with one another on the night's kills, describing this or that encounter without 
a smattering of emotion, challenges to cruelty erupting from time to time like 
flashes of white lightning: a tall, thin vampire being accosted in one corner 
for a needless romanticizing of mortal life, a lack of spirit, a refusal to do 
the most entertaining thing at the moment it was available to him. He was 
simple, shrugging, stow at words, and would fall for long periods into a 
stupefied silence, as if, near-choked with blood, he would as soon have gone to 
his coffin as remained here. And yet he remained, held by the pressure of this 
unnatural group who had made of immortality a conformist's club. How would 
Lestat have found it? Had he been here? What had caused him to leave? No one had 
dictated to Lestat he was master of his small circle; but how they would have 
praised his inventiveness, his catlike toying with his victims. And waste . . . 
that word, that value which had been all-important to me as a fledgling vampire; 
was spoken of often. You `wasted' the opportunity to kill this child. You 
`wasted' the opportunity to frighten this poor woman or drive that man to 
madness, which only a little prestidigitation Would have accomplished.
"My head was spinning. A common mortal headache. I longed to get away from these 
vampires, and only the distant figure of Armand held me, despite his warnings. 
He seemed remote from the others now, though he nodded often enough and uttered 
a few words here and there so that he seemed a part of them, his hand only 
occasionally rising from the lion's paw of his chair. And my heart expanded when 
I saw him this way, saw that no one amongst the small throng caught his glance 
as I caught his glance, and no one held it from time to time as I held it. Yet 
he remained aloof from me, his eyes alone returning to me. His warning echoed in 
my ears, yet I disregarded it. I longed to get away from the theater altogether 
and stood listlessly, garnering information at last that was useless and 
infinitely dull.
" `But is there no crime amongst you, no cardinal crime?' Claudia asked. Her 
violet eyes seemed fixed on me, even in the mirror, as I stood with my back to 
her.
" `Crime! Boredom!' cried out Estelle, and she pointed a white finger at Armand. 
He laughed softly with her from his distant position at the end of the room. 
`Boredom is death!' she cried and bared her vampire fangs, so that Armand put a 
languid hand to his forehead in a stage gesture of fear and falling.
"But Santiago, who was watching with his hands behind his back, intervened. 
`Crime!' he said. `Yes, there is a crime. A crime for which we would hunt 
another vampire down until we destroyed him. Can you guess what that is?' He 
glanced from Claudia to me and back again to her masklike face. `You should 
know, who are so secretive about the vampire that made you.'
" `And why is that?' she asked, her eyes widening ever so slightly, her hands 
resting still in her lap.
"A hush fell over the room, gradually then completely, all those white faces 
turned to face Santiago as he stood there, one foot forward, his hands clasped 
behind his back, towering over Claudia. His eyes gleamed as he saw he had the 
floor. And then he broke away and crept up behind me, putting his hand on my 
shoulder. `Can you guess what that crime is? Didn't your vampire master tell 
you?'
"And drawing me slowly around with those invading familiar hands, he tapped my 
heart lightly in time with its quickening pace.
" `It is the crime that means death to any vampire anywhere who commits it. It 
is to kill your own kind!'
" `Aaaaah!' Claudia cried out, and lapsed into peals of laughter. She was 
walking across the floor now with swirling lavender silk and crisp resounding 
steps. Taking my hand, she said, `I was so afraid it was to be born like Venus 
out of the foam, as we were! Master vampire! Come, Louis, let's go!' she 
beckoned, as she pulled me away.
"Armand was laughing. Santiago was still. And it was Armand who rose when we 
reached the door. `You're welcome tomorrow night,' he said. `And the night 
after.'
"I don't think I caught my breath until rd reached the street. The rain was 
still falling, and all of the street seemed sodden and desolate in the rain, but 
beautiful. A few scattered bits of paper blowing in the wind, a gleaming 
carriage passing slowly with the thick, rhythmic clop of the horse. The sky was 
pale violet. I sped fast, with Claudia beside me leading the way, then finally 
frustrated with the length of my stride, riding in my arms.
" `I don't like them,' she said to me with a steel fury as we neared the Hotel 
Saint-Gabriel. Even its immense, brightly lit lobby was still in the pre-dawn 
hour. I spirited past the sleepy clerks, the long faces at the desk. `I've 
searched for them the world over, and I despise them!' She threw off her cape 
and walked into the center of the room. A volley of rain hit the French windows. 
I found myself turning up the lights one by one and lifting the candelabrum to 
the gas flames as if I were Lestat or Claudia. And then, seeking the puce velvet 
chair I'd envisioned in that cellar, I slipped down into it, exhausted. It 
seemed for the moment as if the room blazed about me; as my eyes fixed on a 
gilt-framed painting of pastel trees and serene waters, the vampire spell was 
broken. They couldn't touch us here, and yet I knew this to be a lie, a foolish 
lie.
" `I am in danger, danger,' Claudia said with that smoldering wrath.
" But how can they know what we did to him? Besides, we are in danger! Do you 
think for a moment I don't acknowledge my own guilt! And if you wire the only 
one . . : I reached out for her now as she drew near, but her fierce eyes 
settled on me and I let my hands drop back limp. `Do you think I would leave you 
in danger?'
"She was smiling. For a moment I didn't believe my eyes. `No, you would not, 
Louis. You would not. Danger holds you to me. . .
" `Love holds me to you,' I said softly.
" `Love?' she mused. `What do you mean by love?' And then, as if she could see 
the pain in my face, she came close and put her hands on my cheek. She was cold, 
unsatisfied, as I was cold and unsatisfied, teased by that mortal boy but 
unsatisfied.
" `That you take my love for granted always,' I said to her. `That we are wed. . 
. ' But even as I said these words I felt my old conviction waver; I felt that 
torment I'd felt last night when she had taunted me about mortal passion. I 
turned away from her.
" `You would leave me for Armand if he beckoned to you ....
" `Never . . : I said to her.
" `You would leave me, and he wants you as you want him. He's been waiting for 
you. . .
" `Never. . . .' I rose now and made my way to that chest. The doors were 
locked, but they would not keep those vampires out. Only we could keep them out 
by rising as early as the light would let us. I turned to her and told her to 
come. And she was at my side. I wanted to bury my face in her hair, I wanted to 
beg her forgiveness. Because, in truth, she was right; and yet I loved her, 
loved her as always. And now, as I drew her in close to me, she said `Do you 
know what it was that he told me over and over without ever speaking a word; do 
you know what was the kernel of the trance he put me in so my eyes could only 
look at him, so that he pulled me as if my heart were on a string?'
" 'So you felt it . . : I whispered. `So it was the same.'
" `He rendered me powerless!' she said. I saw the image of her against those 
books above his desk, her limp neck, her dead hands.
" `But what are you saying? That he spoke to you, that he . . .'
" `Without words!' she repeated. I could see the gaslights going dim, the candle 
flames too solid in their stillness. The rain beat on the panes. `Do you know 
what he said . . . that I should die!' she whispered. `That I should let you 
go.'
"I shook my head, and yet in my monstrous heart I felt a surge of excitement. 
She spoke the truth as she believed it. There was a film in her eyes, glassy and 
silver. `He draws life out of me into himself,' she said, her lovely lips 
trembling so, I couldn't bear it. I held her tight, but the tears stood in her 
eyes. `Life out of the boy who is his slave, life out of me whom he would make 
his slave. He loves you. He loves you. He would have you, and he would not have 
me stand in the way.'
" `You don't understand him!' I fought it, kissing her; I wanted to shower her 
with kisses, her cheek, her lips.
" `No, I understand him only too well,' she whispered to my lips, even as they 
kissed her. `It is you who don't understand him. Love's blinded you, your 
fascination with his knowledge, his power. If you knew how he drinks death you'd 
hate him more than you ever hated Lestat. Louis, you must never return to him. I 
tell you, I'm in danger!' "
"Early the next night, I left her, convinced that Armand alone among the 
vampires of the theater could be trusted. She let me go reluctantly, and I was 
troubled, deeply, by the expression in her eyes. Weakness was unknown to her, 
and yet I saw fear and something beaten even now as she let me go. And I hurried 
on my mission, waiting outside the theater until the last of the patrons had 
gone and the doormen were tending to the locks.
"What they thought I was, I wasn't certain. An actor, like the others, who did 
not take off his paint? It didn't matter. What mattered was that they let me 
through, and I passed them and the few vampires in the ballroom, unaccosted, to 
stand at last at Armand's open door. He saw me immediately, no doubt had heard 
my step a long way off, and he welcomed me at once and asked me to sit down. He 
was busy with his human boy, who was dining at the desk on a silver plate of 
meats and fish. A decanter of white wine stood next to him, and though he was 
feverish and weak from last night, his skin was florid and his heat and 
fragrance were a torment to me. Tot apparently to Armand, who sat in the leather 
chair by the fire opposite me, turned to the human, his arms folded on the 
leather arm. The boy filled his glass and held it up now in a salute. 'My 
master,' he said, his eyes flashing on me as he smiled; but the toast was to 
Armand.
" `Your slave,' Armand whispered with a deep intake of breath that was 
passionate. And he watched, as the boy drank deeply. I could see him savoring 
the wet lips, the mobile flesh of the throat as the wine went down. And now the 
boy took a morsel of white meat, making that same salute, and consumed it 
slowly, his eyes fixed on Armand. It was as though Armand feasted upon the 
feast, drinking in that part of life which he could not share any longer except 
with his eyes. And lost though he seemed to it, it was calculated; not that 
torture I'd felt years ago when I stood outside Babette's window longing for her 
human life.
"When the boy had finished, he knelt with his arms around Armand's neck as if he 
actually savored the icy flesh. And I could remember the night Lestat first came 
to me, how his eyes seemed to burn, how his white face gleamed. You know what I 
am to you now.
"Finally, it was finished. He was to sleep, and Armand locked the brass gates 
against him. And in minutes, heavy with his meal, he was dozing, and Armand sat 
opposite me, his large, beautiful eyes tranquil and seemingly innocent. When I 
felt them pull me towards him, I dropped my eyes, wished for a fire in the 
grate, but there were only ashes.
"`You told me to say nothing of my origin, why was this?' I asked, looking up at 
him. It was as if he could sense my holding back, yet wasn't offended, only 
regarding me with a slight wonder. But I was weak, too weak for his wonder, and 
again I looked away from him.
" `Did you kill this vampire who made you? Is that why you are here without him, 
why you won't say his name? Santiago thinks that you did.'
"`And if this is true, or if we can't convince you otherwise, you would try to 
destroy us?' I asked.
" `I would not try to do anything to you,' he said, calmly. `But as I told you, 
I am not the leader here in the sense that you asked.'
" `Yet they believe you to be the leader, don't they? And Santiago, you shoved 
him away from me twice.'
"'I'm more powerful than Santiago, older. Santiago is younger than you are,' he 
said. His voice was simple, devoid of pride. These were facts.
"'We want no quarrel with you.'
"`It's begun,' he said. `But not with me. With those above.'
" `But what reason has he to suspect us?'
"He seemed to be thinking now, his eyes cast down, his chin resting on his 
closed fist. After a while which seemed interminable, he looked up. `I could 
give you reasons,' he said. `That you are too silent. That the vampires of the 
world are a small number and live in terror of strife amongst themselves and 
choose their fledglings with great care, making certain that they respect the 
other vampires mightily. There are fifteen vampires in this house, and the 
number is jealously guarded. And weak vampires are feared; I should say this 
also. That you are flawed is obvious to them: you feel too much, you think too 
much. As you said yourself, vampire detachment is not of great value to you. And 
then there is this mysterious child: a child who can never grow, never be 
self-sufficient. I would not make a vampire of that boy there now if his life, 
which is so precious to me, were in serious danger, because he is too young, his 
limbs not strong enough, his mortal cup barely tasted: yet you bring with you 
this child. What manner of vampire made her, they ask; did you make her? So, you 
see, you bring with you these flaws and this mystery and yet you are completely 
silent. And so you cannot be trusted. And Santiago looks for an excuse. But 
there is another reason closer to the truth than all those things which I've 
just said to you. And that is simply this: that when you first encountered 
Santiago in the Latin Quarter you . . . unfortunately . . . called him a 
buffoon.'
" `Aaaaah.' I sat back.
" 'It would perhaps have been better all around if you had said nothing.' And he 
smiled to see that I understood with him the irony of this.
"I sat reflecting upon what he'd said, and what weighed as heavily upon me 
through all of it were Claudia's strange admonitions, that this gentle-eyed 
young man had said to her, 'Die,' and beyond that my slowly accumulating disgust 
with the vampires in the ballroom above.
"I felt an overwhelming desire to speak to him of these things. Of her fear, no, 
not yet, though I couldn't believe when I looked into his eyes that he'd tried 
to wield this power over her: his eyes said, Live. His eyes said, Learn. And oh, 
how much I wanted to confide to him the breadth of what I didn't understand; 
how, searching all these years, I'd been astonished to discover those vampires 
above had made of immortality a club of fads and cheap conformity. And yet 
through this sadness, this confusion, came the clear realization: Why should it 
be otherwise? What had I expected? What right had I to be so bitterly 
disappointed in Lestat that I would let him diet Because he wouldn't show me 
what I must find in myself? Armand's words, what had they been? The only power 
that exists is inside ourselves . . . .
" `Listen to me,' he said now. `You must stay away from them. Your face hides 
nothing. You would yield to me now were I to question you. Look into my eyes'
"I didn't do this. I fined my eyes firmly on one of those small paintings above 
his desk until it ceased to be the Madonna and Child and became a harmony of 
line and color. Because I knew what he was saying to me was true.
" `Stop them if you will, advise them that we don't mean any harm. Why can't you 
do this? You say yourself we're not your enemies, no matter what we've done. . . 
'
"I could hear him sigh, faintly. `I have stopped them for the time being,' he 
said. `But I don't want such power over them as would be necessary to stop them 
entirely. Because if I exercise such power, then I must protect it. I will make 
enemies. And I would have forever to deal with my enemies when all I want here 
as a certain space, a certain peace. Or not to be here at all. I accept the 
scepter of sorts they've given me, but not to rule over them, only to keep them 
at a distance.'
" `I should have known,' I said, my eyes still fired on that painting.
" `Then, you must stay away. Celeste has a great deal of power, being one of the 
oldest, and she is jealous of the child's beauty. And Santiago, as you can see, 
is only waiting for a shred of proof that you're outlaws.'
"I turned slowly and looked at him again where he sat with that eerie vampire 
stillness, as if he were in fact not alive at all. The moment lengthened. I 
heard his words just as if he were speaking them again: `All I want here is a 
certain space, a certain peace. (r)r not to be here at all.' And I felt a 
longing for him so strong that it took all my strength to contain it, merely to 
sit there gazing at him, fighting it. I wanted it to be this way: Claudia safe 
amongst these vampires somehow, guilty of no crime they might ever discover from 
her or anyone else, so that I might be free, free to remain forever in this cell 
as long as I could be welcome, even tolerated, allowed here on any condition 
whatsoever.
"I could see that mortal boy again as if he were not asleep on the bed but 
kneeling at Armand's side with his arms around Armand's neck. It was an icon for 
me of love. The love I felt. Not physical love, you must understand. I don't 
speak of that at all, though Armand was beautiful and simple, and no intimacy 
with him would ever have been repellent. For vampires, physical love culminates 
and is satisfied in one thing, the kill. I speak of another kind of love which 
drew me to him completely as the teacher which Lestat had never been. Knowledge 
would never be withheld by Armand, I knew it. I would pass through him as 
through a pane of glass so that I might bask in it and absorb it and grow. I 
shut my eyes. And I thought I heard him speak, so faintly I wasn't certain. It 
seemed he said, `Bo you know why I am here?'
"I looked up at him again, wondering if he knew my thoughts, could actually read 
them, if such could conceivably be the extent of that power. Now after all these 
years I could forgive Lestat for being nothing but an ordinary creature who 
could riot show me the uses of my powers; and yet I still longed for this, could 
fall into it without resistance. A sadness pervaded it all, sadness for my own 
weakness and my own awful dilemma. Claudia waited for me. Claudia, who was my 
daughter and my love.
" `What am I to do?' I whispered. `Go away from them, go away from you? After 
all these years . .
" `They don't matter to you,' he said
"I smiled and nodded.
" `What is it you want to do?' he asked. And his voice assumed the most gentle, 
sympathetic tone.
" `Don't you know, don't you have that power?' I asked. `Can't you read my 
thoughts as if they were words?'
"He shook his head. `Not the way you mean. I only know the danger to you and the 
child is real because it's real to you. And I know your loneliness even with her 
love is almost more terrible than you can bear.'
"I stood up then. It would seem a simple thing to do, to rise, to go to the 
door, to hurry quickly down that passage; and yet it took every ounce of 
strength, every smattering of that curious thing I've called my detachment.
" `I ask you to keep them away from us,' I said at the door; but I couldn't look 
back at him, didn't even want the soft intrusion of his voice.
" `Don't go,' he said.
" `I have no choice.'
"I was in the passage when I heard him so close to me that I started. He stood 
beside me, eye level with my eye, and in his hand he held a key which he pressed 
into mine.
" `There is a door there,' he said, gesturing to the dark end, which I'd thought 
to be merely a wall. `And a stairs to the side street which no one uses but 
myself. Go this way now, so you can avoid the others. You are anxious and they 
will see it' I turned around to go at once, though every part of my being wanted 
to remain there. 'But let me tell you this,' he said, and lightly he pressed the 
back of his hand against my heart. `Use the power inside you. Don't abhor it 
anymore. Use that power! And when they see you in the streets above, use that 
power to make your face a mask and think as you gaze on them as on anyone: 
beware. Take that word as if it were an amulet rd given you to wear about your 
neck. And when your eyes meet Santiago's eyes, or the eyes of any other vampire, 
speak to them politely what you will, but think of that word and that word only. 
Remember what I say. I speak to you simply because you respect what is simple. 
You understand this. That's your strength.'
"I took the key from him, and I don't remember actually putting it into the lock 
or going up the steps. Or where he was or what he'd done. Except that, as I was 
stepping into the dark side street behind the theater, I heard ham say very 
softly to me from someplace close to me: `Come here, to me, when you can.' I 
looked around for him but was not surprised that I couldn't see him. He had told 
me also sometime or other that I must not leave the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, that I 
must not give the others the shred of evidence of guilt they wanted. `You see,' 
he said, `killing other vampires is very exciting; that is why it is forbidden 
under penalty of death.'
"And . then I seemed to awake. To the Paris street sharing with rain, to the 
tall, narrow buildings on either side of me, to the fact that the door had shut 
to make a solid dark wall behind me and that Armand was no longer there.
"And though I knew Claudia waited for me, though I passed her in the hotel 
window above the gas lamps, a tiny figure standing among waxen petaled flowers, 
I moved away from the boulevard, letting the darker streets swallow me, as so 
often the streets of New Orleans had done.
"It was not that I did not love her; rather, it was that I knew I loved her only 
too well, that the passion for her was as great as the passion for Armand. And I 
fled them both now, letting the desire for the kill rise in me like a welcome 
fever, threatening consciousness, threatening pain.
"Out of the mist which had followed the rain, a man was walking towards me. I 
can remember him as roaming on the landscape of a dream, because the night 
around me was dark and unreal. The hill might have been anywhere in the world, 
and the soft lights of Paris were an amorphous shimmering in the fog. And 
sharp-eyed and drunk, he was walking blindly into the arms of death itself, his 
pulsing fingers reaching out to touch the very bones of my face.
"I was not crazed yet, not desperate. I might have said to him, `Pass by.' I 
believe my lips did form the word Armand had given me, `Beware.' Yet I let him 
slip his bold, drunken arm around my waist; I yielded to his adoring eyes, to 
the voice that begged to paint me now and spoke of warmth, to the rich, sweet 
smell of the oils that streaked his loose shirt. I was following him, through 
Montmartre, and I whispered to him, `You are not a member of the dead.' He was 
leading me through an overgrown garden, through the sweet, wet grasses, and he 
was laughing as I said, `Alive, alive,' his hand touching my cheek, stroking my 
face, clasping finally my chin as he guided me into the light of the low 
doorway, his reddened face brilliantly illuminated by the oil lamps, the warmth 
seeping about. us as the door closed.
"I saw the great sparkling orbs of his eyes, the tiny red veins that reached for 
the dark centers, that warm hand burning my cold hunger as he guided me to a 
chair. And then all around me I saw faces blazing, faces rising in the smoke of 
the lamps, in the shimmer of the burning stove, a wonderland of colors on 
canvases surrounding us beneath the small, sloped roof, a blaze of beauty that 
pulsed and throbbed. `Sit down, sit down . . ' he said to me, those feverish 
hands against my chest, clasped by my hands, yet sliding away, my hunger rising 
in waves.
"And now I saw him at a distance, eyes intent, the palette in his hand, the huge 
canvas obscuring the arm that moved. And mindless and helpless, I sat there 
drifting with his paintings, drifting with those adoring eyes, letting it go on 
and on till Armand's eyes were gone and Claudia was running down that stone 
passage with clicking heels away from me, away from me.
" `You are alive . . : I whispered. `Bones,' he answered me. `Bones . . .' And I 
saw them in heaps, taken from those shallow graves in New Orleans as they are 
and put in chambers behind the sepulcher so that another can be laid in that 
narrow plot. I felt my eyes close; I felt my hunger become agony, my heart 
crying out for a living heart; and then I felt him moving forward, hands out to 
right my face-that fatal step, that fatal lurch. A sigh escaped my lips. `Save 
yourself,' I whispered to him. `Beware.'
"And then something happened in the moist radiance of his face, something 
drained the broken vessels of his fragile skin. He backed away from me, the . 
brush falling from ills hands. And I rose over him, feeling my teeth against my 
lip, feeling my eyes fill with the colors of his face, my ears fill with his 
struggling cry, my hands fill with that strong, fighting flesh until I drew him 
up to me, helpless, and tore that flesh and had the blood that gave it life. 
`Die,' I whispered when I held him loose now, his head bowed against my coat, 
`die,' and felt him struggle to look up at. me. And again I drank and again he 
fought, until at last he slipped, limp and shocked and near to death, on the 
floor. Yet his eyes did not close.
"I settled before his canvas, weak, at peace, gazing down at him, at his vague, 
graying eyes, my own hands florid, my skin so luxuriously warm. `I am mortal 
again,' I whispered to him. `I am alive. With your blood I am alive.' His eyes 
closed. I sank back against the wall and found myself gazing at my own face.
"A sketch was all he'd done, a series of bold black lines that nevertheless made 
up my face and shoulders perfectly, and the color was already begun in dabs and 
splashes: the green of my eyes, the white of my cheek. But the horror, the 
horror of seeing my expression! For he had captured it perfectly, and there was 
nothing of horror in it. Those green eyes gazed at me from out of that loosely 
drawn shape with a mindless innocence, the expressionless wonder of that 
overpowering craving which he had not understood. Louis of a hundred years ago 
lost in listening to the sermon of the priest at Mass, lips parted and slack, 
hair careless, a hand curved in the lap and limp. A mortal Louis. I believe I 
was laughing, putting my hands to my face and laughing so that the tears nearly 
rose in my eyes; and when I took my fingers down, there was the stain of the 
tears, tinged with mortal blood. And already there was begun in me the tingling 
of the monster that had killed, and would kill again, who was gathering up the 
painting now and starting to flee with it from the small house.
"When suddenly, up from the floor, the man rose with an animal groan and 
clutched at my boot, his hands sliding off the leather. With some colossal 
spirit that defied me, he reached up for the painting and held fast to it with 
his whitening hands. `Give it back!' he growled at me. `Give it back!' And we 
held fast, the two of us, I staring at him and at my own hands that held so 
easily what he sought so desperately to rescue, as if he would take it to heaven 
or hell; I the thing that his blood could not make human, he the man that my 
evil had not overcome. And then, as if I were not myself, I tore the painting 
loose from him and, wrenching him up to my lips with one arm, gashed his throat 
in rage."
"Entering the rooms of the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, I set the picture on the mantel 
above the fire and looked at it a long time. Claudia was somewhere in the rooms, 
and some other presence intruded, as though on one of the balconies above a 
woman or a man stood near, giving off an unmistakable personal perfume. I didn't 
know why I had taken the picture, why I'd fought for it so that it shamed me now 
worse than the death, and why I still held onto it at the marble mantel, my head 
bowed, my hands visibly trembling. And then slowly I turned my head. I wanted 
the rooms to take shape around me; I wanted the flowers, the velvet, the candles 
in their sconces. To be mortal and trivial and safe. And then, as if in a mist, 
I saw a woman there.
"She was seated calmly at that lavish table where Claudia attended to her hair; 
and so still she sat, so utterly without fear, her green taffeta sleeves 
reflected in the tilted mirrors, her skirts reflected, that she was not one 
still woman but a gathering of women. Her dark-red hair was parted in the middle 
and drawn back to her ears, though a dozen little ringlets escaped to make a 
frame for her pale face. And she was looking at me with two calm, violet eyes 
and a child's mouth that seemed almost obdurately soft, obdurately the cupid's 
bow unsullied by paint or personality; and the mouth smiled now and said, as 
those eyes seemed to fire: `Yes, he's as you said he would be, and I love him 
already. He's as you said.' She rose now, gently lifting that abundance of dark 
taffeta, and the three small mirrors emptied at once.
"And utterly baffled and almost incapable of speech, I turned to see Claudia far 
off on the immense bed, her small face rigidly calm, though she clung to the 
silk curtain with a tight fist. 'Madeleine,' she said under her breath, `Louis 
is shy.' And she watched with cold eyes as Madeleine only smiled when she said 
this and, drawing closer to me, put both of her hands to the lace fringe around 
her throat, moving it back so I could see the two small marks there. Then the 
smile died on her lips, and they became at once sullen and sensual as her eyes 
narrowed and she breathed the word, `Drink.'
"I turned away from her, my fist rising in a consternation for which I couldn't 
find words. But then Claudia had hold of that fist and was looking up at me with 
relentless eyes. `Do it, Louis,' she commanded. `Because I cannot do it.' Her 
voice was painfully calm, all the emotion under the hard, measured tone. `I 
haven't the size, I haven't the strength! You saw to that when you made me! Do 
it!'
"I broke away from her, clutching my wrist as if she'd burned it. I could see 
the door, and it seemed to me the better part of wisdom to leave by it at once. 
I could feel Claudia's strength, her will, and the mortal woman's eyes seemed 
afire with that same will. But Claudia held me, not with a gentle pleading, a 
miserable coaxing that would have dissipated that power, making me feel pity for 
her as I gathered my own forces. She held me with the emotion her eyes had 
evinced even through her coldness and the way that she turned away from me now, 
almost as if she'd been instantly defeated. I did not understand the manner in 
which she sank back on the bed, her head bowed, her lips moving feverishly, her 
eyes rising only to scan the walls. I wanted to touch her and say to her that 
what she asked was impossible; I wanted to soothe that fire that seemed to be 
consuming her from within.
"And the soft, mortal woman had settled into one of the velvet chairs by the 
fire, with the rustling and iridescence of her taffeta dress surrounding her 
like part of the mystery of her, of her dispassionate eyes which watched us now, 
the fever of her pale face. I remember turning to her, spurred on by that 
childish, pouting mouth set against the fragile face. The vampire kiss had left 
no visible trace except the wound, no inalterable change on the pale pink flesh. 
`How do we appear to you?' I asked, seeing her eyes on Claudia. She seemed 
excited by the diminutive beauty, the awful woman's-passion knotted in the small 
dimpled hands.
"She broke her gaze and looked up at me. `I ask you . . . how do we appear? Do 
you think us beautiful, magical, our white skin, our fierce eyes? (r)h, I 
remember perfectly what mortal vision was, the dimness of it, and how the 
vampire's beauty burned through that veil, so powerfully alluring, so utterly 
deceiving! Drink, you tell me. You haven't the vaguest conception under God of 
what you ask!'
"But Claudia rose from the bed and came towards me. `How dare you!' she 
whispered. `How dare you make this decision for both of us! Do you know how I 
despise you! Do you know that I despise you with a passion that eats at me like 
a canker!' Her small form trembled, her hands hovering over the pleated bodice 
of her yellow gown. `Don't you look away from me! I am sick at heart with your 
looking away, with your suffering. You understand nothing. Your evil is that you 
cannot be evil, and I must suffer for it. I tell you, I will suffer no longer!' 
Her fingers bit into the flesh of my wrist; I twisted, stepping back from her, 
foundering in the face of the hatred, the rage rising like some dormant beast in 
her, looking out through her eyes. `Snatching me from mortal hands like two grim 
monsters in a nightmare fairy tale, you idle, blind parents! Fathers!' She spat 
the word. `Let tears gather in your eyes. You haven't tears enough for what 
you've done to me. Six more mortal years, seven, eight . . I might have had that 
shape!' Her pointed finger flew at Madeleine, whose hands had risen to her face, 
whose eyes were clouded over. Her moan was almost Claudia's name. But Claudia 
did not hear her. `Yes, that shape, I might have known what it was to walk at 
your side. Monsters! To give me immortality in this hopeless guise, this 
helpless form!' The tears stood in her eyes. The words had died away, drawn in, 
as it were, on her breast.
" `Now, you give her to met' she said, her head bowing, her curls tumbling down 
to make a concealing veil. `You give her to me. You do this, or you finish what 
you did to me that night in the hotel in New Orleans. I will not live with this 
hatred any longer, I will not live with this rage! I cannot. I will not abide 
it!' And tossing her hair, she put her hands to her ears as if to stop the sound 
of her own words, her breath, drawn in rapid gasps, the tears seeming to scald 
her cheeks.
"I had sunk to my knees at her side, and my arms were outstretched as if to 
enfold her. Yet I dared not touch her, dared not even say her name, lest my own 
pain break from me with the first syllable in a monstrous outpouring of 
hopelessly inarticulate cries. `Oooh.' She shook her head now, squeezing the 
tears out onto her cheeks, her teeth clenched tight together. `I love you still, 
that's the torment of it. Lestat I never loved. But you! The measure of my 
hatred is that love. They are the same! Do you know now how much I hate you!' 
She flashed at me through the red film that covered her eyes.
" `Yes,' I whispered. I bowed my head. But she was gone from me into the arms of 
Madeleine, who enfolded her 
desperately, as if she might protect Claudia from me-the irony of it, the 
pathetic irony-protect Claudia from 
herself. She ,was whispering to Claudia, `Don't cry, don't cry?' her hands 
stroking Claudia's face and hair 
with a fierceness that would have bruised a human child.
"But Claudia seemed lost against her breast suddenly, her eyes closed, her face 
smooth, as if all passion were drained away from her, her arm sliding up around 
Madeleine's neck, her head falling against the taffeta and lace. She lay still, 
the tears staining her cheeks, as if all this that had risen to the surface had 
left her weak and desperate for oblivion, as if the room around her, as if I, 
were not there.
"And there they were together, a tender mortal crying unstintingly now, her warm 
arms holding what she could not possibly understand, this white and fierce and 
unnatural child thing she believed she loved. And if I had not felt for her, 
this mad and reckless woman flirting with the damned, if I had not felt all the 
sorrow for her I felt for my mortal self, I would have wrested the demon thing 
from her arms, held it tight to me, denying over and over the words I'd just 
heard. But I knelt there still, thinking only, The love is equal to the hatred; 
gathering that selfishly to my own breast, holding onto that as I sank back 
against the bed.
"A long time before Madeleine was to know it, Claudia had ceased crying and sat 
still as a statue on Madeleine's lap, her liquid eyes fixed on me, oblivious to 
the soft, red hair that fell around her or the woman's hand that still stroked 
her. And I sat slumped against the bedpost, staring back at those vampire eyes, 
unable and unwilling to speak in my defense. Madeleine was whispering into 
Claudia's ear, she was letting her tears fall into Claudia's tresses. And then 
gently, Claudia said to her, `Leave us.'
" `No.' She shook her head, holding fight to Claudia. And then she shut her eyes 
and trembled all over with some terrible vexation, some awful torment. But 
Claudia was leading her from the chair, and she was now pliant and shocked and 
white-faced, the green taffeta ballooning around the' small yellow silk dress.
"In the archway of the parlor they stopped, and Madeleine stood as if confused, 
her hand at her throat, beating like a wing, then going still. She looked about 
her like that hapless victim on the stage of the Theatre des Vampires who did 
not know where she was. But Claudia had gone for something. And I saw her emerge 
from the shadows with what appeared to be a large doll. I rose on my knees to 
look at it. It was a doll, the doll of a little girl with raven hair and green 
eyes, adorned with lace and ribbons, sweet-faced and wide-eyed, its porcelain 
feet tinkling as Claudia put it into Madeleine's arms. And Madeleine's eyes 
appeared to harden as she held the doll, and her Lips drew back from her teeth 
in a grimace as she stroked its hair. She was laughing low under her breath. 
`Lie down,' Claudia said to her; and together they appeared to sink into the 
cushions of the couch, the green taffeta rustling and giving way as Claudia lay 
with her and put her arms around her neck. I saw the doll sliding, dropping to 
the floor, yet Madeleine's hand moped for it and held it dangling, her own head 
thrown back, her eyes shut tight, and Claudia's curls stroking her face.
"I settled back on the floor and leaned against the soft siding of the bed. 
Claudia was speaking now in a low voice, barely above a whisper, telling 
Madeleine to be patient, to be still, I dreaded the sound of her step on the 
carpet; the sound of the doors sliding closed to shut Madeleine away from us, 
and the hatred that lay between us like a killing vapor.
"But when I looked up to her, Claudia was standing there as if transfixed and 
lost in thought, all rancor and bitterness gone from her face, so that she had 
the blank expression of that doll.
" 'All you've said to me is true,' I said to her. `I deserve your hatred. I've 
deserved it from those first moments when Lestat put you in my arms.'
"She seemed unaware of me, and her eyes were infused with a soft light. Her 
beauty burned into my soul so that I could hardly stand it, and then she said, 
wondering, `You could have killed me then, despite him. You could have done it.' 
Then her eyes rested on me calmly. `Do you wish to do it now?'
" `Do it now!' I put my arm around her, moved her close to me, warmed by her 
softened voice. `Are you mad, to say such things to me? Do I want to do it now!"
" `I want you to do it,' she said. `Bend down now as you did then, draw the 
blood out of me drop by drop, all you have the strength for; push my heart to 
the brink. I am small, you can take me. I won't resist you, I am something frail 
you can crush like a flower.'
" `You mean these things? You mean what you say to me?' I asked. `Why don't you 
place the knife here, why don't you turn it?'
" `Would you die with me?' she asked, with a sly, mocking smile. `Would you in 
fact die with me?' she pressed. `Don't you understand what is happening to me? 
That he's killing me, that master vampire who has you in thrall, that he won't 
share your love with me, not a drop of it? I see his power in your eyes. I sea 
your misery, your distress, the love for him you can't hide. Turn around, I'll 
make you look at me with those eyes that want him, I'll make you listen'
" `Don't anymore, don't . . . I won't leave you. I've sworn to you, don't you 
see? I cannot give you that woman'
" `But I'm fighting for my life! Give her to me so she can care for me, complete 
the guise I must have to live! And be can have you then! I am fighting for my 
life!'
"I all but shoved her off. `No, no, it's madness, it's witchery,' I said, trying 
to defy her. `It's you who will not share me with him, it's you who want every 
drop of that love. H not from me, from her. He overpowers you, he disregards 
you, and it's you who wish him dead the way that you killed Lestat. Well, you 
won't make me a party to this death, I tell you, not this death! I will not make 
her one of us, I will not damn the legions of mortals who'll die at her hands if 
I dot Your power over me is broken. I will not!'
"Oh, if she could only have understood!
"Not for a moment could I truly believe her words against Armand, that out of 
that detachment which was beyond revenge he could selfishly wish for her death. 
But that was nothing to me now; something far more terrible than I could grasp 
was happening, something I was only beginning to understand, against which my 
anger was nothing but a mockery, a hollow attempt to oppose her tenacious will. 
She hated me, she loathed me, as she herself had confessed, and my heart 
shriveled inside me, as if, in depriving me of that love which 'had sustained me 
a lifetime, she had dealt me a mortal blow. The knife was there. I was dying for 
her, dying for that love as I was that very first night when Lestat gave her to 
me, turned her eyes to me, and told her my name; that love which had warmed me 
in my self-hatred, allowed me to exist. Oh, how Lestat had understood it, and 
now at last his plan was undone.
"But it went beyond that, in some region from which I was shrinking as I strode 
back and forth, back and forth, my hands opening and closing at my sides, 
feeling not only that hatred in her liquid eyes: It was her pain. She had shown 
me her pain! To give me immortality in this hopeless guise, this helpless form. 
I put my hands to my ears, as if she spoke the words yet, and the tears flowed. 
For all these years I had depended utterly upon her cruelty, her absolute lack 
of pain! And pain was what she showed to me, undeniable pain. Oh, how Lestat 
would have laughed at us. That was why she had put the knife to him, because he 
would have laughed. To destroy me utterly she need only show me that pain. The 
child I made a vampire suffered. Tier agony was as my own.
"There was a coffin in that other room, a bed for Madeleine, to which Claudia 
retreated to leave me alone with what I could not abide. I welcomed the silence. 
And sometime during the few hours that remained of the night I found myself at 
the open window, feeling the slow mist of the rain. It glistened on the fronds 
of the ferns, on sweet white flowers that listed, bowed, and finally broke from 
their stems. A carpet of flowers littering the little balcony, the petals 
pounded softly by the rain. I felt weak now, and utterly alone. What had passed 
between us tonight could never be undone, and what had been done to Claudia by 
me could never be undone.
"But I was somehow, to my own bewilderment, empty of all regret. Perhaps it was 
the night, the starless sky, the gas lamps frozen in the mist that gave some 
strange comfort for which I never asked and didn't know how, in this emptiness 
and aloneness, to receive. I am alone, I was thinking. I am alone. It seemed 
dust, perfectly, and so to have a pleasing, inevitable form. And I pictured 
myself then forever alone, as if on gaining that vampire strength the night of 
my death I had left Lestat and never looked back for him, as
I had moved on away from him, beyond the need of him and anyone else. As if the 
might had said to me, `You are the night and the night alone understands you and 
enfolds you in its arms.' One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An 
inexplicable peace.
"Yet I could feel. the end of this peace as surely as td felt my brief surrender 
to it, and it was breaking like the dark clouds. The urgent pain of Claudia's 
loss pressed in on me, behind me, like a shape gathered from the corners of this 
cluttered and oddly alien room. But outside, even as the night seemed to 
dissolve in a fierce driving wind, I could feel something calling to me, 
something inanimate which I'd never known. And a power within me seemed to 
answer that power, not with resistance but with an inscrutable, chilling 
strength.
"I moved silently through the rooms, gently dividing the doors until I saw, in 
the dim light cast by the flickering gas flames behind me, that sleeping woman 
lying in my shadow on the couch, the doll limp against her breast. Sometime 
before I knelt at her side I saw her eyes open, and I could feel beyond her in 
the collected dark those other eyes watching me, that breathless tiny vampire 
face waiting.
" `Will you care for her, Madeleine?' I saw her hands clutch at the doll, 
turning its face against her breast. And my own hand went out for it, though I 
did not know why, even as .she was answering me.
" `Yes!' She repeated it again desperately.
" `Is this what you believe her to be, a doll?' I asked her, my hand closing on 
the doll's head, only to feel her snatch it away from me, see her teeth clenched 
as she glared at me.
" `A child who can't die! That's what she is,' she said, as if she were 
pronouncing a curse.
" `Aaaaah . . .' I whispered.
" `I've done with dolls,' she said, shoving it away from her into the cushions 
of the couch. She was fumbling with something on her breast, something she 
wanted me to see and not to see, her fingers catching hold of it and closing 
over it. I mew what it was, had noticed it before. A locket fixed with a gold 
pin. I wish I could describe the passion that infected her round features, how 
her soft baby mouth was distorted.
" `And the child who did die?' I guessed, watching her. I was picturing a doll 
shop, dolls with the same face. She shook her head, her hand pulling hard on the 
locket so the pin ripped the taffeta. It was fear I saw in her now, a consuming 
panic: And her hand bled as she opened it from the broken pin. I took the locket 
from her fingers. `My daughter,' she whispered, her lip trembling.
"It was a doll's face on the small fragment of porcelain, Claudia's face, a baby 
face, a saccharine, sweet mockery of innocence an artist had painted there, a 
child with raven hair like the doll. And the mother, terrified, was staring at 
the darkness an front of her.
" `Grief . . .' I said gently.
" `I've done with grief,' she said, her eyes narrowing as .she looked up at me. 
`If you knew how I long to have your power; I'm ready for it, I hunger for it.' 
And she turned to me, breathing deeply, so that her breast seemed to swell under 
her dress.
"A violent frustration rent her face then. She turned away from me, shaking her 
head, her curls. `If you were a mortal man; man and monster!' she said angrily. 
`If I could only show you my power . . : and she smiled malignantly, defiantly 
at me `. . . I could make you want me, desire me! But you're unnatural!' Her 
mouth went down at the corners. `What can I give you! What can I do to make you 
give me what you have!' Her hand hovered over her breasts, seeming to caress 
them like a man's hand.
"It was strange, that moment; strange because I could never have predicted the 
feeling her words incited in me, the way that I saw her now with that small 
enticing waist, saw the round, plump curve of her breasts and those delicate, 
pouting lips. She never dreamed what the mortal man in me was, how tormented I 
was by the blood I'd only just drunk. Desire her I did, more than she knew; 
because she didn't understand the nature of the kill. And with a man's pride I 
wanted to prove that to her, to humiliate her for what she had said to me, for 
the cheap vanity of her provocation and the eyes that looked away from me now in 
disgust. But this was madness. These were not the reasons to grant eternal life.
"And cruelly, surely, I said to her, `Did you love this child?'
"I will never forget her face then, the violence in her, the absolute hatred. 
`Yes.' She all but hissed the words at me. `How dare you!' She reached for the 
locket even as I clutched it. It was guilt that was consuming her, not love. It 
was guilt-that shop of dolls Claudia had described to me, shelves and shelves of 
the effigy of that dead child. But guilt that absolutely understood the finality 
of death. There was something as hard in her as the evil in myself, something as 
powerful. She had her hand out towards me. She touched my waistcoat and opened 
her fingers there, pressing them against my chest. And I was on my knees, 
drawing close to her, her hair brushing my face.
" `Hold fast to me when I take you,' I said to her, seeing her eyes grow wide, 
her mouth open. `And when the swoon is strongest, listen all the harder for the 
beating of my heart. Hold and say over and over, "I will live."'
"'Yes, yes,' she was nodding, her heart pounding with her excitement.
"Her hands burned on my neck, fingers forcing their way into my collar. `Look 
beyond me at that distant light; don't take your eyes off of it, not for a 
second, and say over and over, "I will live."'
"She gasped as I broke the flesh, the warm current coming into me, her breasts 
crushed against me, her body arching up, helpless, from the couch. And I could 
see her eyes, even as I shut my own, see that taunting, provocative mouth. I was 
drawing on her, hard, lifting her, and I could feel her weakening, her hands 
dropping limp at her sides. `Tight, tight,' I whispered over the hot stream of. 
her blood, her heart thundering in my ears, her blood swelling my satiated 
veins. `The lamp,' I whispered, 'look at it!' Her heart was slowing, stopping, 
and her head dropped back from me on the velvet, her eyes dull to the point of 
death. It seemed dying for her, dying for that love as I was that very first 
night when Lestat gave her to me, turned her eyes to me, and told her my name; 
that love which had warmed me in my self-hatred, allowed me to exist. Oh, how 
Lestat had understood it, and now at last his plan was undone.
"But it went beyond that, in some region from which I was shrinking as I strode 
back and forth, back and forth, my hands opening and closing at my silos, 
feeling not only that hatred in her liquid eyes: It was her pain. She had shown 
me her pain! To give me immortality in this hopeless guise, this helpless form. 
I put my hands to my ears, as if she spoke the words yet, and the tears flowed. 
For all these years I had depended utterly upon her cruelty, her absolute lack 
of pain! And pain was what she showed to me, undeniable pain. Oh, how Lestat 
would have laughed at us. That was why she had put the knife to him, because he 
would have laughed. To destroy me utterly she need only show me that pain. The 
child I made a vampire suffered. Her agony was as my own.
"There was a coffin in that other room, a bed for Madeleine, to which Claudia 
retreated to leave me alone with what I could not abide. I welcomed the silence. 
And sometime during the few hours that remained of the night I found myself at 
the open window, feeling the slow mist of the rain. It glistened on the fronds 
of the ferns, on sweet white flowers that listed, bowed, and finally broke from 
their stems. A carpet of flowers littering the little balcony, the petals 
pounded softly by the rain. I felt weak now, and utterly alone. What had passed 
between us tonight could never he undone, and what had been done to Claudia by 
me could never be undone.
"But I was somehow, to my own bewilderment, empty of all regret. Perhaps it was 
the night, the starless sky, the gas lamps frozen in the mist that gave some 
strange comfort for which I never asked and didn't know how, in this emptiness 
and aloneness, to receive. I am alone, I was thinking. I am alone. It seemed 
dust, perfectly, and so to have a pleasing, inevitable form. And I pictured 
myself then forever alone, as if on gaining that vampire strength the night of 
my death I had left Lestat and never looked back for him, as if I had moved on 
away from him, beyond the need of him and anyone else. As if the night had said 
to me, `You are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in 
its arms.' One with the shadow. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.
"Yet I could feel. the end of this peace as surely as I'd felt my brief 
surrender to it, and it was breaking like the dark clouds. The urgent pain of 
Claudia's loss pressed in on me, behind me, like a shape gathered from the 
corners of this cluttered and oddly alien room. But outside, even as the night 
seemed to dissolve in a fierce driving wind, I could feel something calling to 
me, something inanimate which rd never known. And a power within me seemed to 
answer that power, not with resistance but with an inscrutable, chilling 
strength.
"I moved silently through the rooms, gently dividing the doors until I saw, in 
the dim light cast by the flickering gas flames behind me, that sleeping woman 
lying in my shadow on the couch, the doll lung against her breast. Sometime 
before I knelt at her side I saw her eyes open, and I could feel beyond her in 
the collected dark those other eyes watching me, that breathless tiny vampire 
face waiting.
" `Will you care for her, Madeleine?' I saw her hands clutch at the doll, 
turning its face against her breast. And my own hand went out for it, though I 
did not know why, even as she was answering me.
" `Yes!' She repeated it again desperately.
"`Is this what you believe her to be, a doll?' I asked her, my hand closing on 
the doll's head, only to feel her snatch it away from me, see her teeth clenched 
as she glared at me.
" `A child who can't die! That's what she is,' she said, as if she were 
pronouncing a curse.
" `Aaaaah . . .' I whispered.
" `I've done with dolls,' she said, shoving it away from her into the cushions 
of the couch. She was fumbling with something on her breast, something she 
wanted me to see and not to see, her fingers catching hold of it and closing 
over it. I knew what it was, had noticed it before. A locket fixed with a gold 
pin. I wish I could describe the passion that infected her round features, how 
her soft baby mouth was distorted.
" `And the .child who did die?' I guessed, watching her. I was picturing a doll 
shop, dolls with the same face. She shook her head, her hand pulling hard on the 
locket so the pin ripped the taffeta. It was fear I saw in her now, a consuming 
panic: And her hand bled as she opened it from the broken pin. I took the locket 
from her fingers. `My daughter,' she whispered, her lip trembling.
"It was a doll's face on the small fragment of porcelain, Claudia's face, a baby 
face, a saccharine, sweet mockery of innocence an artist had painted there, a 
child with raven hair like the doll. And the mother, terrified, was staring at 
the darkness in front of her.
" `Grief . . .' I said gently.
" `I've done with grief,' she said, her eyes narrowing as -she looked up at me. 
`If you knew how I long to have your power; I'm ready for it, I hunger for it' 
And she turned to me, breathing deeply, so that her breast seemed to swell under 
her dress.
"A violent frustration sent her face then. She turned away from me, shaking her 
head, her curls. `If you were a mortal man; man tend monster!' she said angrily. 
`If I could only show you my power . . : and she smiled malignantly, defiantly 
at me `. . . I could make you want me, desire me! But you're unnatural!' Her 
mouth went down at the corners. `what can I give you! What can I do to make you 
give me what you have!' Her hand hovered over her breasts, seeming to caress 
them like a man's hand.
"It was strange, that moment; strange because I could never have predicted the 
feeling her words incited in me, the way that I saw her now with that small 
enticing waist, saw the round, plump curve of her breasts and those delicate, 
pouting lips. She never dreamed what the mortal man in me was, how tormented I 
was by the blood I'd only just drunk. Desire her I did, more than she knew; 
because she didn't understand the nature of the kill. And with a man's pride I 
wanted to prove that to her, to humiliate her for what she had said to me, for 
the cheap vanity of her provocation and the eyes that looked away from me now in 
disgust. But this was madness. These were not the reasons to grant eternal life.
"And cruelly, surely, I said to leer, `Did you love this child?'
"I will never forget her face then, the violence in her, the absolute hatred. 
`Yes.' She all but hissed the words at me. `How dare you!' She reached for the 
locket even as I clutched it. It was guilt that was consuming her, not love. It 
was guilt-that shop of dolls Claudia had described to me, shelves and shelves of 
the effigy of that dead child. But guilt that absolutely understood the finality 
of death. There was something as hard in her as the evil in myself, something as 
powerful. She had her hand out towards me. She touched my waistcoat and opened 
her fingers there, pressing them against my chest. And I was on my knees, 
drawing close to her, her hair brushing my face.
" `Hold fast to me when I take you,' I said to her, seeing her eyes grow wide, 
her mouth open. `And when the swoon is strongest, listen all the harder for the 
beating of my heart. Hold and say over and over, "I will live."'
" `Yes, yes,' she was nodding, her heart pounding with her excitement.
"Her hands burned on my neck, fingers forcing their way into my collar. `Look 
beyond me at that distant light; don't take your eyes off of it, not for a 
second, and say over and over, "I will live."'
"She gasped as I broke the flesh, the warn current coming into me, her breasts 
crushed against me, her body arching up, helpless, from the couch. And I could 
see her eyes, even as I shut my own, see that taunting, provocative mouth. I was 
drawing on her, hard, lifting her, and I could feel her weakening, her hands 
dropping limp at her sides. `Tight, tight,' I whispered over the hot stream of 
her blood, her heart thundering in my ears, her blood swelling my satiated 
veins. `The lamp,' I whispered, `look at it!' Her heart was slowing, stopping, 
and her head dropped back from me on the velvet, her eyes dull to the point of 
death. It seemed for a moment I couldn't move, yet I knew I had to, that someone 
else was lifting my wrist to my mouth as the room turned round and round, that I 
was focusing on that light as I had told her to do, as I tasted my own blood 
from my own wrist, and then forced it into her mouth. `Drink it. Drink,' I said 
to her. But she lay as if dead. I gathered her close to me, the blood pouring 
over her lips. Then she opened her eyes, and I felt the gentle pressure of her 
mouth, and then her hands closing tight on the arm as she began to suck. I was 
rocking her, whispering to her, trying desperately to break my swoon; and then I 
felt her powerful pull. Every blood vessel felt it. I was threaded through and 
through with her pulling, my hand holding fast to the couch now, her heart 
beating fierce against my heart, her fingers digging deep into my arm, my 
outstretched palm. It was cutting me, scoring me, so I all but cried out as it 
went on and on, and I was backing away from her, yet pulling her with me, my 
life passing through my arm, her moaning breath in time with her pulling. And 
those strings which were my veins, those searing wires pulled at my very heart 
harder and harder until, without will or direction, I had wrenched free of her 
and fallen away from her, clutching that bleeding wrist tight with my own hand.
"She was staring at me, the blood staining her open mouth. An eternity seemed to 
pass as she stared. She doubled and tripled in my blurred vision, then collapsed 
into one trembling shape. , Her hand moved to her mouth, yet her eyes did not 
move but grew large in her face as she stared. And then she rose slowly, not as 
if by her own power but as if lifted from the couch bodily by some invisible 
force which held her now, staring as she turned round and round, her massive 
skirt moving stiff as if she were all of a piece, turning like some great calved 
ornament on a music box that dances helplessly round and round to the music. And 
suddenly she was staring down at the taffeta, grabbing hold of it, pressing it 
between her fingers so it zinged and rustled, and she let it fall, quickly 
covering her ears, her eyes shut tight, then opened wide again. And then it 
seemed she saw the lamp, the distant, low gas lamp of the other room that gave a 
fragile light through the double doors. And she ran to it and stood beside it, 
watching it as if it were alive. `Don't touch it . . ' Claudia said to her, and 
gently guided her away. But Madeleine had seen the flowers on the balcony and 
she was drawing close to them now, her outstretched palms brushing the petals 
and then pressing the droplets of rain to her face.
"I was hovering on the fringes of the room, watching her every move, how she 
took the flowers and crushed them in her hands and let the petals fall all 
around her and how she pressed her fingertips to the mirror and stared into her 
own eyes. My own pain had ceased, a handkerchief bound the wound, and I was 
waiting, waiting, seeing now that Claudia had no knowledge from memory of what 
was to come nest. They were dancing together, as Madeleine's skin grew paler and 
paler in the unsteady golden light. She scooped Claudia into her arms, and 
Claudia rode round in circles with her, her own small face alert and wary behind 
her smile.
"And then Madeleine weakened. She stepped backwards and seemed to- lose her 
balance. But quickly she righted herself and let Claudia go gently down to the 
ground. On tiptoe, Claudia embraced her. `Louis.' She signaled to me under her 
breath. `Louis. . .
"I beckoned for her to come away. And Madeleine, not seeming even to see us, was 
staring at her own outstretched hands. Her face was blanched and drawn, and 
suddenly she was scratching at her lips and staring at the dark stains on her 
fingertips. `No, no!' I cautioned her gently, taking Claudia's hand and holding 
her close to my side. A long moan escaped Madeleine's lips.
" 'Louis,' Claudia whispered in that preternatural voice which Madeleine could 
not yet hear.
" `She is dying, which your child's mind can't remember. You were spared it, it 
left no mark on you,' I whispered to her, brushing the hair beak from her ear, 
my eyes never leaving Madeleine, who was wandering from mirror to mirror, the 
tears flowing freely now, the body giving up its life.
" `But, Louis, if she dies. . .' Clauda cried.
" `No.' I knelt down, seeing the distress in her small face. `The blood was 
strong enough, she will live. But she will be afraid, terribly afraid.' And 
gently, firmly, I pressed Claudia's hand and kissed her cheek. She looked at me 
then with mingled wonder and fear. And she watched me with that same expression 
as I wandered closer to Madeleine, drawn by her cries. She reeled now, her hands 
out, and I caught her and held her close. Her eyes already burned with unnatural 
light, a violet ire reflected in her tears.
" `It's mortal death, only mortal death,' I said to her gently. `Do you see the 
sky? We must leave it now and you must hold tight to me, lie by my side. A sleep 
as heavy as death will come over my limbs, and I won't be able to solace you. 
And you will lie there and you will struggle with it. But you hold tight to. me 
in the darkness, do you hear? You hold tight to my hands, which will hold your 
hands as long as I have feeling.'
"She seemed lost for the moment in my gaze, and I sensed the wonder that 
surrounded her, how the radiance of my eyes was the radiance of all colors and 
how all those colors were all the more reflected for her in my eyes. I guided 
her gently to the coffin, telling her again not to be afraid. 'When you arise, 
you will be immortal,' I said. `No natural cause of death can harm you. Come, 
lie down.' I could see her fear of it, see her shrink from the narrow boa, its 
satin no comfort. Already her skin began to glisten, to have that brilliance 
that Claudia and I shared. I knew now she would not surrender until I lay with 
her.
"I held her and looked across the long vista of the room to where Claudia stood, 
with that strange coffin, watching me. Her eyes were still but dark with an 
undefined suspicion, a cool distrust. I set Madeleine down beside her bed and 
moved towards those eyes. And, kneeling calmly beside her, I gathered Claudia in 
my arms. `Don't you recognize me?' I asked her. `Don't you know who I am?'
"She looked at me. 'No.' she said.
"I smiled. I nodded. `Bear me no ill will,' I said. `We are even.'
"At that she moved her head to one side and studied me carefully, then seemed to 
smile despite herself and to nod in assent.
" `For you see,' I said to her in that same calm voice, `what died tonight an 
this room was not that woman. It will take her many nights to die, perhaps 
years. What has died in this room tonight is the last vestige is me of what was 
human'
"A shadow fell over her face; clear, as if the composure were rent like a veil. 
And her lips parted, but only with a short intake of breath. Then she said, 
`Well, then you are right. Indeed. We axe even."'
" `I want to burn the doll shop!'
"Madeleine told us this. She was feeding to the fire in the grate the folded 
dresses of that dead daughter, white lace and beige linen, crinkled shoes, 
bonnets that smelled of camphor balls and sachet. `It means nothing now, any of 
it' She stood back watching the fire blaze. And she looked at Claudia with 
triumphant, fiercely devoted eyes.
"I did not believe her, so certain I was-even though night after night I had to 
lead her away from men and women she could no longer drain dry, so satiated was 
she with the blood of earlier kills, often lifting her victims off their feet in 
her passion, crushing their throats with her ivory fingers as surely as she 
drank their blood-so certain I was that sooner or later this mad intensity must 
abate, and she would take hold of the trappings of this nightmare, her own 
luminescent flesh, these lavish rooms of the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, and cry out to 
be awakened; to be free. She did not understand it was no experiment; showing 
her fledgling teeth to the gilt-edged mirrors, she was mad.
"But I still did not realize how mad she was, and how accustomed to dreaming; 
and that she would not cry out for reality, rather would feed reality to her 
dreams, a demon elf feeding her spinning wheel with the reeds of the world so 
she might make her own weblike universe.
"I was just beginning to understand her avarice, her magic.
"She had a dollmaker's craft from making with her old lover over and over the 
replica of her dead child, which I was to understand crowded the shelves of this 
shop we were soon to visit. Added to that was a vampire's skill and a vampire's 
intensity, so that in the space of one night when I had turned her away from 
killing, she, with that same insatiable need, created out of a few sticks of 
wood, with her chisel and knife, a perfect rocking chair, so shaped and 
proportioned for Claudia that seated in it by the fire, she appeared a woman. To 
that must be added, as the nights passed, a table of the same scale; and from a 
toy shop a tiny oil lamp, a china cup and saucer; and from a lady's purse a 
little leather-bound book for notes which in Claudia's hands became a large 
volume. The world crumbled and ceased to exist at the boundary of the small 
space which soon became the length and breadth of Claudia's dressing room: a bed 
whose posters reached only to my breast buttons, and small mirrors that 
reflected only the legs of an unwieldy giant when I found myself lost among 
them; paintings hung low for Claudia's eye; and finally, upon her little vanity 
table, black evening gloves for tiny fingers, a woman's low-cut gown of midnight 
velvet, a tiara from a child's masked ball. And Claudia, the crowning jewel, a 
fairy queen with bare white shoulders wandering with her sleek tresses among the 
rich items of her tiny world while I watched from the doorway, spellbound, 
ungainly, stretched out on the carpet so I could lean my head on my elbow and 
gaze up into my paramour's eyes, seeing them mysteriously softened for the time 
being by the perfection of this sanctuary. How beautiful she was in black lace, 
a cold, flaxen-haired woman with a kewpie doll's face and liquid eyes which 
gazed at me so serenely and so long that, surely, I must have been forgotten; 
the eyes must be seeing something other than me as I lay there on the floor 
dreaming; something other than the clumsy universe surrounding me, which was now 
marked off and nullified by someone who had suffered in it, someone who had 
suffered always, but who was not seeming to suffer now, listening as it were to 
the tinkling of a toy music box, putting a hand on the toy clock. I saw a vision 
of shortened hours and little golden minutes. I felt I was mad.
"I put my hands under my head and gazed at the chandelier; it was hard to 
disengage myself from one world and enter the other. And Madeleine, on the 
couch, was working with that regular passion, as if immortality could not 
conceivably mean rest, sewing cream lace to lavender satin for the small bed, 
only stopping occasionally to blot the moisture tinged with blood from her white 
forehead.
"I wondered, if I shut my eyes, would this realm of tiny things consume the 
rooms around me, and would I, like Gulliver, awake to discover myself bound hand 
and foot, an unwelcome giant? I had a vision of houses made for Claudia in whose 
garden mice would be monsters, and tiny carriages, and flowery shrubbery become 
trees. Mortals would be so entranced, and drop to their knees to look into the 
small windows. Like the spider's web, it would attract.
"I was bound hand and foot here. Not only by that fairy beauty-that exquisite 
secret of Claudia's white shoulders and the rich luster of pearls, bewitching 
languor, a tiny bottle of perfume, now a decanter, from which a spell is 
released that promises Eden-I was bound by fear. That outside these rooms, where 
I supposedly presided over the education of Madeleine -erratic conversations 
about killing and vampire nature in which Claudia could have instructed so much 
more easily than I, if she had ever showed the desire to take the lead-that 
outside these rooms, where nightly I was reassured with soft kisses and 
contented looks that the hateful passion which Claudia had shown once and once 
only would not return that outside these rooms, I would find that I was, 
according to my own hasty admission, truly changed: the mortal part of me was 
that part which had loved, I was certain. So what did I feel then for Armand, 
the creature for whom I'd transformed Madeleine, the creature for whom I had 
wanted to be free? A curious and disturbing distance? A dull pain? A nameless 
tremor? Even in this worldly clutter, I saw Armand in his monkish cell, saw his 
dark-brown eyes, and felt that eerie magnetism.
"And yet I did not move to go to him. I did not dare discover the extent of what 
I might have lost. Nor try to separate that loss from some other oppressive 
realization: that in Europe I'd found no truths to lessen loneliness, transform 
despair. Rather, I'd found only the inner workings of my own small soul, the 
pain of Claudia's, and a passion for a vampire who was perhaps more evil than 
Lestat, for whom I became as evil as Lestat, but in whom I saw the only promise 
of good in evil of which I could conceive.
"It was all beyond me, finally. And so the clock ticked on the mantel; and 
Madeleine begged to see the performances of the Theatres des Vampires and swore 
to defend Claudia against any vampire who dared insult her; and Claudia spoke of 
strategy and said, `Not yet, not now,' and I lay back observing with some 
measure of relief Madeleine's love for Claudia; her blind covetous passion. Oh, 
I have so little compassion in my heart or memory for Madeleine. I thought she 
had only seen the first vein of suffering, she had no understanding of death. 
She was so easily sharpened, so easily driven to wanton violence. I supposed in 
my colossal conceit and self-deception that my own grief for my dead brother was 
the only true emotion. I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in 
love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a many-colored and 
luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the power 
to walk on water.
"What would Christ need have done to make me follow him like Matthew or Peter? 
Dress well, to begin with. And have a luxurious head of pampered yellow hair.
"I hated myself. And it seemed, lulled half to sleep as I was so often by their 
conversation-Claudia whispering of killing and speed and vampire craft, 
Madeleine bent over her singing needle-it seemed then the only emotion of which 
I was still capable: hatred of self. I love them. I hate them. I do not care if 
they are there. Claudia puts her hands on my hair as if she wants to tell me 
with the old familiarity that her heart's at peace. I do not care. And there is 
the apparition of Armand, that power, that heartbreaking clarity. Beyond a 
glass, it seems. And g Claudia's playful hand, I understand for the first time 
in any life what she feels when she forgives me for being myself whom she says 
she hates and loves: she feels almost nothing."
 "It was a week before we accompanied Madeleine on her errand, to torch a 
universe of dolls behind a plate-glass window. I remember wandering up the 
street away from it, round a turn into a narrow cavern of darkness where the 
falling rain was the only sound. But then I saw the red glare against the 
clouds. Bells clanged and men shouted, and Claudia beside me was talking softly 
of the nature of fire. The thick smoke rising in that dickering glare unnerved 
me. I was feeling fear. Not a wild, mortal fear, but something cold like a hook 
in may side. ' fear-it was the old town house burning in the Rue Royale, Lestat 
in the attitude of sleep on the burning floor.
" `Fire purifies . . : Claudia said. And I said, `No, fire merely destroys . . . 
.'
"Madeleine had gone past us and was roaming at the top of the street, a phantom 
in the rain, her white hands whipping the air, beckoning to us, white arcs, of 
white fireflies. And I remember Claudia leaving me for her. The sight of wilted, 
writhing yellow hair as she told me to follow. A ribbon fallen underfoot, 
flapping and floating in a swirl of black water. It seemed they were gone. And I 
bent to retrieve that ribbon. But another hand reached out for it. It was
Armand who gave it to me now.
"I was shocked to see him there, so near, the figure of Gentleman Death in a 
doorway, marvelously real in his black cape and silk tie, yet ethereal as the 
shadows in his stillness. There was the faintest glimmer of the fire in his 
eyes, red warming the blackness there to the richer brown.
"And I woke suddenly as if rd been dreaming, woke to the sense of him, to his 
hand enclosing mine, to his head inclined as if to let me know he wanted me to 
follow-awoke to my own excited experience of his presence, which consumed me as 
surely as it had consumed me in his cell. We were walking together now, fast, 
nearing the Seine, moving so swiftly and artfully through a gathering of men 
that they scarce saw us, that we scarce saw them. That I could keep up with him 
easily amazed me. He was forcing me into some acknowledgment of my powers, that 
the paths I'd normally chosen were human paths I no longer need follow.
"I wanted desperately to talk to him, to stop him with both my hands on his 
shoulders, merely to look into his eyes again as I'd done that last night, to 
fix him in some time and place, so that I could deal with the excitement inside 
me. There was so much I wanted to tell him, so much I wanted to explain. And yet 
1 didn't know what to say or why I would say it, only that the fullness of the 
feeling continued to relieve me almost to tears. This was what I'd feared lost.
"I didn't knew where we were now, only that in my wanderings I'd passed here 
before: a street of ancient mansions, of garden walls and carriage doors grad 
towers overhead and windows of leaded glass beneath stone arches. Houses of 
other centuries, gnarled trees, that sudden thick and silent tranquility which 
means that the masses are shut out; a handful of mortals inhabit this vast 
region of highceilinged rooms; stone absorbs the sound of breathing, the space 
of whole lives.
"Armand was step a wall now, his arm against the overhanging bough of a tree, 
his hand reaching for me; and in ors instant I stood beside him, tire wet 
foliage brushing any face. Above, I could see story after story rising to a lone 
tower that barely emerged from the dark, teeming rain. `Listen to me; we are 
going to climb to the tower,' Armand was saying.
" `I cannot . . it's impassible . . . I'
" `You don't begin to know your own powers. You can climb easily. Remember, if 
you fall you will not be injured. Do as I do. But note this. The inhabitants of 
this house have known me far a hundred years and think me a spirit; so if by 
chance they see you, or you see them through those windows, remember what they 
believe you to be and show no consciousness of them lest you disappoint them or 
confuse them. Do you hear? You are perfectly safe.'
"I wasn't sure what frightened me more, the climb itself or the notion of being 
seen as a ghost; but I had no time for comforting witticisms, even to myself. 
Armand had begun, his boots finding the crack between the stones, his hands sure 
as claws in the crevices; and I was moving after him, tight to the wall, not 
daring to look down, clinging for a moment's rest to the thick, carved arch over 
a window, glimpsing inside, over a licking fire, a dark shoulder, a hand 
stroking with a poker, some figure that moved completely without knowledge that 
it was watched. Gone. Higher and higher we climbed, until we had reached the 
window of the tower itself, which Armand quickly wrenched open, his long legs 
disappearing over the sill; and I rose up after him, feeling his arm out around 
my shoulders.
"I sighed despite myself, as I stood in the room, rubbing the backs of my arms, 
looking around this wet, strange place. The rooftops were silver below, turrets 
rising here and there through the huge, rustling treetops; and far off glimmered 
the broken chain of a lighted boulevard. The room seemed as damp as the night 
outside. Armand was making a fire.
"From a molding pile of furniture he was picking chairs, breaking them into wood 
easily despite the thickness of their rungs. There was something grotesque about 
him, sharpened by his grace and the imperturbable calm of his white face. He did 
what any vampire could do, cracking these thick pieces of wood into splinters, 
yet he did what only a vampire could do. And there seemed nothing human about 
him; even his handsome features and dark hair became the attributes of a 
terrible angel who shared with the rest of us only a superficial resemblance. 
The tailored coat was a mirage. And though I felt drawn to him, more strongly 
perhaps than I'd ever been drawn to any living creature save Claudia, he excited 
me in other ways which resembled fear. I was not surprised that, when he 
finished, he set a heavy oak chair down for me, but retired himself to the 
marble mantelpiece and sat there warming his hands over the fire, the flames 
throwing red shadows into his face.
" `I can hear the inhabitants of the house,' I said to him. The warmth was good. 
I could feel the leather of my boots drying, feel the warmth in my fingers.
" `Then you know that I can hear them,' he said softly; and though this didn't 
contain a hint of reproach, I realized the implications of my own words.
" `And if they comet' I insisted, studying him.
"'Can't you tell by my manner that they won't come? he asked. `We could sit here 
all night, and never speak of them. I want you to know that if we speak of them 
it is because you want to do so.' And when I said nothing, whey perhaps I looked 
a little defeated, he said gently that they had long ago sealed off this tower 
and left it undisturbed; and if in fact they saw the smoke from the chimney or 
the light in the window, none of them would venture up until tomorrow.
"I could see now there were several shelves of books at one side of the 
fireplace, and a writing table. The pages on top were wilted, but there was an 
inkstand and several pens. I could imagine the room a very comfortable place 
when it was not storming, as it was now, or after the fire had dried out the 
air.
" `You see,' Armand said, `you really have no need of the rooms you have at the 
hotel. You really have need of very little. But each of us mast decide how much 
he wants. These people in this house have a name for me; encounters with me 
cause talk for twenty years. They are only isolated instants in my time which 
mean nothing. They cannot hurt me, and I use their house to be alone. No one of 
the Theatre des Vampires knows of my coming here. This is my secret.'
"I had watched him intently as he was speaking, and thoughts which had occurred 
to me in the cell at the theater occurred to me again. Vampires do not age, and 
I wondered how his youthful face and manner might differ now from what he had 
been a century before or a century before that; for his face, though not 
deepened by the lessons of maturity, was certainly no mask. It seemed powerfully 
expressive as was his unobtrusive voice, and I was at a loss finally to fully 
anatomize why. I knew only I was as powerfully drawn to him as before; and to 
some extent the words I spoke now were a subterfuge. `But what holds you to 'the 
Theatre des Vampires?' I asked.
" `A need, naturally. But I've found what I need,' he said. `Why do you shun 
me?'
" `I never shunned you,' I said, trying to hide the excitement these words 
produced in me. `You understand I have to protect Claudia, that she has no one 
but me. Or at least she had no one until . .
" `Until Madeleine came to live with you. . .
" `Yes . . .' I said.
" But now Claudia has released you, yet still yon stay with her, and stay bound 
to her as your paramour,' he said.
" `No, she's no paramour of mine; you don't understand,' I said. `Rather, she's 
my child, and I don't know that she can release me. . . ' These were thoughts 
I'd gone over and over in my mind. `I don't knew if the child possesses the 
power to release the parent. I don't know that I won't be bound to her for as 
long as she '
"I stopped. I was gong to say, `for as long as she lives.' But I realized it was 
a hollow mortal clicle6. She would live forever, as I would live forever. But 
wasn't it so for mortal fathers? Their daughters live forever because these 
fathers die first. I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how 
Armand listened: that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, 
his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did not start forward to 
seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the 
thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse-the things 
which often make dialogue impossible.
"And after a long interval he said, `I want you. I want you more than anything 
in the world.'
"For a moment I doubted what I'd heard. It struck me as unbelievable. And I was 
hopelessly disarmed by it, and the wordless vision of our living together 
expanded and obliterated every other consideration in my mind.
" `I said that I want you. I want you more than anything in the world,' he 
repeated, with only a subtle change of expression. And then he sat waiting, 
watching. His face was as tranquil as always, his smooth, white forehead beneath 
the shock of his auburn hair without a trace of care, his large eyes reflecting 
on me, his lips still.
" `You want this of me, yet you don't come to me,' he said: `There are things 
you want to know, and you don't ask. You see Claudia slipping away from you, yet 
you seem powerless to prevent it, and then you would hasten it, and yet you do 
nothing.!
" 'I don't understand my own feelings. Perhaps they are clearer to you than they 
are to me. . . '
" `You don't begin to know what a mystery you are!' he said.
" `But at least you know yourself thoroughly. I can't claim that,' I said. `I 
love her, yet I am not close to her. I mean that when I am with you as I am now, 
I know that I know nothing of her, nothing of anyone.'
" `She's an era for you, an era of your life. If and when you break with her, 
you break with the only one alive who has shared that time with you. You fear 
that, the isolation of it, the burden, the scope of eternal life.'
" `Yes, that's true, but that's only a small part of it. The era, it doesn't 
mean much to me. She made it mean something. Other vampires must experience this 
and survive it, the passing of a hundred eras.'
" `But they don't survive it,' he said. `The world would be choked with vampires 
if they survived it. How do you think I come to be the eldest here or anywhere?' 
he asked.
"I thought about this. And then I ventured, `They die by violence?'
" `No, almost never. It isn't necessary. How many vampires do you think have the 
stamina for immortality? They have the cost dismal notions of immortality to 
begin with. For in becoming immortal they want all the forms of their life to be 
fined as they are and incorruptible: carriages made in the same dependable 
fashion, clothing of the cut which suited their prime, men attired and speaking 
in the manner they have always understood and valued. When, in fact, all things 
change except the vampire himself; everything except the vampire is subject to 
constant corruption and distortion. Soon, with an inflexible mind, and often 
even with the most flexible mind, this immortality becomes a penitential 
sentence in a madhouse of figures and forms that are hopelessly unintelligible 
and without value. One evening a vampire rises and realizes what he has feared 
perhaps for decades, that he simply wants no more of life at any cost. That 
whatever style or fashion or shape of existence made immortality attractive to 
him has been swept off the face of the earth. And nothing remains to offer 
freedom from despair except the act of killing. And that vampire goes out to 
die. No one will find his remains. No one will know where he has gone. And often 
no one around him-should he still seek the company of other vampires--no one 
will know that he is in despair. He will have ceased long ago to speak- of 
himself or of anything. He will vanish.'
"I sat back impressed by the obvious truth of it, and yet at the same time, 
everything in me revolted against that prospect. I became aware of the depth of 
my hope and my terror; how very different those feelings were from the 
alienation that he described, how very different from that awful wasting 
despair. There was something outrageous and repulsive in that despair suddenly. 
I couldn't accept it.
" `But you wouldn't allow such a state of mind in yourself. Look at you,' I 
found myself answering. `If there weren't one single work of art left in this 
world . . . and there are thousands . . . if there weren't a single natural 
beauty . . . if the world were reduced to one empty cell and one fragile candle, 
I can't help but see you studying that candle, absorbed in the flicker of its 
light, the change of its colors . . . how long could that sustain you . . . what 
possibilities would it create? Am I wrong? Am I such a crazed idealist?'
" `No,' he said. There was a brief smile on his lips, an evanescent flush of 
pleasure. But then he went on simply. `But you feel an obligation to a world you 
love because that world for you is still intact. It is conceivable your own 
sensitivity might become the instrument of madness. You speak of works of art 
and natural beauty. I wish I had the artist's power to bring alive for you the 
Venice of the fifteenth century, my master's palace there, the love I felt for 
him when I was a mortal boy, and the love he felt for me when he made me a 
vampire. Oh, if I could make those times come alive for either you or me . . . 
for only an instant! What would that be worth? And what a sadness it is to me 
that time doesn't dim the memory of that period, that it becomes all the richer 
and more magical in light of the world I see today.'
" `Love?' I asked. `There was love between you and the vampire who made you?' I 
leaned forward.
" `Yes,' he said. `A love so strong he couldn't allow me to grow old and die. A 
love that waited patiently until I was strong enough to be born to darkness. Do 
you mean to tell me there was no bond of love between you and the vampire who 
made you?'
" `None,' I said quickly. I couldn't repress a bitter smile.
"He studied me. `Why then did he give you these powers?' he asked.
"I sat back. `You see these powers as a gift!' I said. `Of course you do. 
Forgive me, but it amazes me, how in your complexity you are so profoundly 
simple.' I laughed.
" `Should I be insulted?" he smiled. And his whole manner only confirmed me in 
what rd just said. He seemed so innocent. I was only beginning to understand 
him.
" `No, not by me,' I said, my pulse quickening as I looked at him. `You're 
everything I dreamed of when I became a vampire. You see these powers as a 
gift!' I repeated it. `But tell me . . . do you now feel love for this vampire 
who gave you eternal life? Do you feel this now?'
"He appeared to be thinking, and then he sand slowly, `Why does this matter?' 
But went on: `I don't think I've been fortunate in feeling love for many people 
or many things. But yes, I love him. Perhaps I do not love him as you mean. It 
seems you confuse me, rather effortlessly. You are a mystery. I do not need him, 
this vampire, anymore.'
" `I was gifted with eternal life, with heightened perception, and with the need 
to kill,' I quickly explained, `because the vampire who made me wanted the house 
I owned and my money. Do you understand such a thing?' I asked. `Ah, but there 
is so much else behind what I say. It makes itself known to me so slowly, so 
incompletely! You see, it's as if you've cracked a door for me, and light is 
streaming from that door and I'm yearning to get to it, to push it back, to 
enter the region you say exists beyond it! When, in fact, I don't believe it! 
The vampire who made me was everything that I truly believed evil to be: he was 
as dismal, as literal, as barren, as inevitably eternally disappointing as I 
believed evil had to be! I know that now. But you, you are something totally 
beyond that conception! Open the door for me, push it back all the way. Tell me 
about this palace in Venice, this love affair with damnation. I want to 
understand it'
" `You trick yourself. The palace means nothing to you,' he said. `The doorway 
you see leads to me, now. To your coming to live with me as I am. I am evil with 
infinite gradations and without guilt.'
" `Yes, exactly,' I murmured.
" `Arid this makes you unhappy,' he said. `You, who came to me in my cell and 
said there was only one sin left, the willful taking of an innocent human life.'
" `Yes . . ' I said. `How you must have been laughing at me. . . '
" `I never laughed at you,' he said. `I cannot afford to laugh at you. It is 
through you that I can save myself from the despair which I've described to you 
as our death. It is through you that I must make my link with this nineteenth 
century and come to understand it in a way that will revitalize me, which I so 
desperately need It is for you that I've been waiting at the Theatre des 
Vampires. If I knew a mortal of that sensitivity, that pain, that focus, I would 
make him a vampire in an instant. But such can rarely be done. No, I've had to 
wait and watch for you. And now I'll fight for you. Do you see how ruthless I am 
in love? Is this what you meant by love?'
" `Oh, but you'd be making a terrible mistake,' I said, looking him in the eyes. 
His words were only slowly sinking in. Never had I felt my all-consuming 
frustration to be so clear. I could not conceivably satisfy him. I could not 
satisfy Claudia. I'd never been able to satisfy Lestat. And my own mortal 
brother, Paul: how dismally, mortally I had disappointed him!
" `No. I must make contact with the age,' he said to me calmly. `And I can do 
this through you . . . not to learn things from you which I can see in a moment 
in an art gallery or read in an hour in the thickest books . . . you are the 
spirit, you are the heart,' he persisted.
" `No, no.' I threw up my hands. I was on the point of a bitter, hysterical 
laughter. `Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with 
everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at 
any time!' It was too painful, too perfectly true.
"But his face only brightened with an irresistible smile. He seemed on the verge 
of laughing at .me, and then his shoulders began to move with this laughter. 
`lout Louis,' he said softly. `This is the very spirit of your age. Don't you 
see that? 'Everyone else feels as you feel. Your fall from grace and faith has 
been the fall of a century.'
"I was so stunned by this, that for a long time I sat there staring into the 
fire. It had all but consumed the wood and was a wasteland of smoldering ash, a 
gray and red landscape that would have collapsed at the touch of the poker. Yet 
it was very warm, and still gave off powerful light. I saw my life in complete 
perspective
"'And the vampires of the Theatre . . : I asked softly.
" `They reflect the age in cynicism which cannot comprehend the death of 
possibilities, fatuous sophisticated indulgence in the parody of the miraculous, 
decadence whose last refuge is self-ridicule, a mannered helplessness. You saw 
them; you've known them all your life. You reflect your age differently. You 
reflect its broken heart.'
" `This is unhappiness. Unhappiness you don't begin to understand.'
" `I don't doubt it. Tell me what you feel now, what makes you unhappy. Tell me 
why for a period of seven days you haven't come to me, though you were burning 
to come. Tell me what holds you still to Claudia and the other woman.'
"I shook my head. `You don't know what you ask. You see, it was immensely 
difficult for me to perform the act of making Madeleine into a vampire. I broke 
a promise to myself that I would never do this, that my own loneliness would 
never drive me to do it. I don't see our life as powers and gifts. I see it as a 
curse. I haven't the courage to die. But to make another vampire! To bring this 
suffering on another, and to condemn to death all those men and women whom that 
vampire must subsequently kill! I broke a grave promise. And in so doing . . '
" `But if it's any consolation to you . . . surely you realize I had a hand in 
it.'
" `That I did it to be free of Claudia, to be free to come to you . . . yes, I 
realize that. But the ultimate responsibility lies with me!' I said.
" `No. I mean, directly. I made you do it! I was near you the night you did it. 
I exerted my strongest power to persuade you to do it. Didn't you know this?' 
Woe.
"I bowed my head.
" 'I would have made this woman a vampire,' he said softly. `But I thought it 
best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must 
know you wanted it. . .
" `I loathe what I did!' I said.
" `Then loathe me, not yourself.'
" `No. You don't understand. You nearly destroyed the thing you value in me when 
this happened! I resisted you with all my power when I didn't even know it was 
your force which was working on me. Something nearly died in me! Passion nearly 
died in me! I was all but destroyed when Madeleine was created!'
" `But that thing is no longer dead, that passion, that humanity, whatever you 
wish to name it. If it were not alive there wouldn't be tears in your eyes now. 
There wouldn't be rage in your voice,' he said.
"For the moment, I couldn't answer. I only nodded. Then I struggled to speak 
again. `You must never force me to do something against my will! You must never 
exert such power . . ' I stammered.
" `No,' he said at once. `I must not. My power stops somewhere inside you, at 
some threshold. There I am powerless, however . . . this creation of Madeleine 
is done. You are free.'
" `And you are satisfied,' I said, gaining control of myself. `I don't mean to 
be harsh. You have me. I love you. But I'm mystified. You're satisfied?'
" `How could I not be?' he asked. `I am satisfied, of course.'
"I stood up and went to the window. The last embers were dying. The light came 
from the gray sky. I heard Armand follow me to the window ledge. I could feel 
him beside me now, my eyes growing more and more accustomed to the luminosity of 
the sky, so that now I could see his profile and his eye on the falling rain. 
The sound of the rain was everywhere and different: flowing in the gutter along 
the roof, tapping the shingles, falling softly through the shimmering layers of 
tree branches, splattering on the sloped stone sill in front of my hands. A soft 
intermingling of sounds that drenched and colored all of the night.
" To you forgive me . . . for forcing you with the woman?' he asked.
" `You don't need my forgiveness'
" `You need it,' he said. `Therefore, I need it.' Ids face was as always utterly 
calm.
" `Will she care for Claudia? Will she endure?' I asked.
" `She is perfect. Mad; but for these days that is perfect. She will care for 
Claudia. She has never lived a moment of life alone; it is natural to her that 
she be devoted to her companions. She need not have particular reasons for 
loving Claudia. Yet, in addition to her needs, she does have particular reasons. 
Claudia's beautiful surface, Claudia's quiet, Claudia's dominance and control. 
They are perfect together. But I think . . . that as soon as possible they 
should leave Paris:
" `Why?'
" `You know why. Because Santiago and the other vampires watch them with 
suspicion. All the vampires have sees Madeleine. They fear her because she knows 
about them and they don't know her. They don't let others alone who know about 
them'
" `And the boy, Denis? What do you plan to do with him?'
" `He's dead,' he answered.
"I was astonished. Both at his words and his calm. `You killed him?' I gasped.
"He nodded. And said nothing. But his large, dark eyes seemed entranced with me, 
with the emotion, the shock I didn't try to conceal. His soft, subtle smile 
seemed to draw me close to him; his hand closed over mine on the wet window sill 
and I felt my body turning to face him, drawing nearer to him, as though I were 
being moved not by myself but by him. `It was best,' he conceded to me gently. 
And then said, `We must go now. . . : And he glanced at the street below.
" `Armand,' I said. `I can't...'
" `Louis, come after me,' he whispered. And then on the ledge, he stopped. `Been 
if you were to fall on the cobblestones there,' he said, `you would only be hurt 
for a while. You would heal so rapidly and so perfectly that in days you would 
show no sign of it, your bones healing as your skin heals; so let this knowledge 
free you to do what you can so easily do already. Climb down, now.'
" `What can kill me?' I asked.
"Again he stopped. `The destruction of your remains,' he said. `Don't you know 
this? Fire, dismemberment . . . the heat of the sun. Nothing else. You can be 
scarred, yes; but you are resilient. You are immortal.'
"I was looking down through the quiet silver rain into darkness. Then .a light 
flickered beneath the shifting tree limbs, and the pale beams of the light made 
the street appear. Wet cobblestones, the iron hook of the carriage-house bell, 
the vines clinging to the top off the wall. The huge black hulk of a carriage 
brushed the vines, and then the light grew weak, the street went from yellow to 
silver and vanished altogether, as if the dark trees had swallowed it up. Or, 
rather, as if it had all been subtracted from the dark. I felt dizzy. I felt the 
building move. Armand was seated on the window sill looking down at me.
" `Louis, come with me tonight,' he whispered suddenly, with an urgent 
inflection.
" `No,' I said gently. `It's too soon. I can't leave them yet'
"I watched him turn away and look at the dark sky. He appeared to sigh, but I 
didn't hear it. I felt his hand close on mine on the window sill. `Very well . . 
.' he said.
" `A little more time . . ' I said. And he nodded and patted my hand as if to 
say it was all right. Then he swung his legs over and disappeared. For only a 
moment I hesitated, mocked by the pounding of my heart. But then I climbed over 
the sill and commenced to hurry after him, never daring to look down."
"It was very near dawn when I put my key into the lock at the hotel. The gas 
light flared along the walls. And Madeleine, her needle and thread in her hands, 
had fallen asleep by the grate. Claudia stood still, looking at me from among 
the ferns at the window, in shadow. She had her hairbrush in her hands. Her hair 
was gleaming.
"I stood there absorbing some shock, as if all the sensual pleasures and 
confusions of these rooms were passing over me like waves and my body were being 
permeated with these things, so different from the spell of Armand and the tower 
room where we'd been. There was something comforting here, and it was 
disturbing. I was looking for my chair. I was sitting in it with my hands on my 
temples. And then I felt Claudia near me, and I felt her dips against my 
forehead.
" `You've been with Armand,' she said. `You want to go with him.'
"I looked up at her. How soft and beautiful her face was, and, suddenly, so much 
mine. I felt no compunction in yielding to my urge to touch her cheeks, to 
lightly touch her eyelids---familiarities, liberties I hadn't taken with her 
since the night of our quarrel. `I'll see you again; not here, in other places. 
Always I'll know where you are!' I said.
"She put her arms around my neck. She held me tight, and I closed my eyes and 
buried my face in her hair. I was covering her neck with my kisses. I had hold 
of her round, firm little arms. I was kissing them, kissing the soft indentation 
of the flesh in the crooks of her arms, her wrists, her open palms. I felt her 
forgers stroking my hair, my face. `Whatever you wish,' she vowed. `Whatever you 
wish.'
" `Are you happy? Do you have what you want?' I begged her.
" `Yes, Louis.' She held me against her dress, her fingers clasping the back of 
my neck. `I have all that I want` But do you truly know what you want?' She was 
lifting my face so I had to look into her eyes. `It's you I fear for, you who 
might be making the mistake. Why don't you leave Paris with us!' the said 
suddenly. `We have the world, come with us!'
" `No.' I drew back from her. `You want it to as it was with Lestat. It can't be 
that way again, ever. It won't be.'
" `It will be something new and different with Madoleine. I don't ask for that 
again. It was I who put an end to that,' she said. `But do you truly understand 
what you are choosing in Armand?'
"I tanned away from her. There was something stubborn and mysterious inn her 
dislike of him, in her failure to understand him. She would say again that he 
wished her death, which I did not believe. She didn't realize what I realized: 
he could not want her death, because I didn't want it. But how could I explain 
this to her without sounding pompous and blind in my love of him. `It's meant to 
be. It's almost that sort of direction,' I said, as if it were just coming clear 
to me under the pressure of her doubts. `He alone can give me the strength to be 
what I am. I can't continue to live divided and consumed with misery. Either I 
go with him, or I die,' I said. `And it's something else, which is irrational 
and unexplainable and which satisfies only me. . .
" `Which is?' she asked.
" `That I love him,' I said.
" `No doubt you do,' she mused. `But then, you could love even me.'
" `Claudia, Claudia.' I held her close to me, and felt her weight on my knee. 
She drew up close to my chest.
" `T only hope that when you have need of me, you can find me . . .' she 
whispered. `That I can get back to you . . . I've hurt you so often, I've caused 
you so much pain.' Her words trailed off. She was resting still against me. I 
felt her weight, thinking, In a little while, I won't have her anymore. I want 
now simply to hold her. There has always been such pleasure in that simple 
thing. Her weight against me, this hand resting against my neck.
"It seemed a lamp died somewhere. That from the cool, damp air that much light 
was suddenly, soundlessly subtracted. I was sitting on the verge of dream. Had I 
been mortal I would have been content to sleep there. And in that drowsy, 
comfortable state I had a strange, habitual mortal feeling, that the sun would 
wake me gently later and I would have that rich, habitual vision of the ferns in 
the sunshine and the sunshine an the droplets of rain. I indulged that feeling. 
I half closed my eyes.
"Often afterwards I tried to remember those moments. Tried over and over to 
recall just what it was in those rooms as we rested there, that began to disturb 
me, should have disturbed me. How, being off my guard, I was somehow insensible 
to the subtle changes which must have been taking place there. Long after, 
bruised and robbed and embittered beyond my wildest dreams, I sifted through 
those moments, those drowsy quiet early-hour moments when the clock ticked 
almost imperceptibly on the mantelpiece, and the sky grew paler and paler; and 
all I could remember-despite the desperation with which I lengthened and fixed 
that time, in which I held out my hands to stop the clock-all I could remember 
was the soft changing of tight.
"On guard, I would never have let it pass. Deluded with larger concerns, I made 
no note of it. A lamp gone out, a candle extinguished by the shiver of its own 
hot pool of wax. My eyes half shut, I had the sense then. of impending darkness, 
of being shut up in darkness.
"And then I opened my eyes, not thinking of lamps or candles. And it was too 
late. I remember standing upright, Claudia's hand slipping on my arm, and the 
vision of a host of black-dressed men and women moving through the rooms, their 
garments seeming to garner light from every gilt edge or lacquered surface, 
seeming to drain all light away. I shouted out against them, shouted for 
Madeleine, saw her wake with a start, terrified fledgling, clinging to the arm 
of the couch, then down on her knees as they reached out for her. There was 
Santiago and Celeste coming towards us, and behind them, Estelle and others 
whose names I didn't know filling the mirrors and crowding together to make 
walls of shifting, menacing shadow. I was shouting to Claudia to run, having 
pulled back the door. I was shoving her through it and then was stretched across 
it, kicking out at Santiago as he came.
"That weak defensive position rd held against him in the Latin Quarter was 
nothing compared to my strength now. I was too flawed perhaps to ever fight with 
conviction for my own protection. But the instinct to protect Madeleine and 
Claudia was overpowering. I remember kicking Santiago backwards and then 
striking out at that powerful, beautiful Celeste, who sought to get by me. 
Claudia's feet sounded on the distant marble stairway. Celeste was reeling, 
clawing at me, catching hold of me and scratching my face so the blood ran down 
over my collar. I could see it blazing in the comer of my eye. I was on Santiago 
now, turning with him, aware of the awful strength of the arms that held me, the 
hands that sought to get a hold on my throat. `Fight them, Madeleine,' I was 
shouting to her. But all I could hear was her sobbing. Then I saw her in the 
whirl, a fixed, frightened thing, surrounded by other vampires. They were 
laughing that hollow vampire laughter which is like tinsel or silverbells. 
Santiago was clutching at his face. My teeth had drawn blood there. I struck at 
his chest, at his head, the pain searing through my arm, something enclosing my 
chest like two arms, which I shook off, hearing the crash of broken glass behind 
me. But something else, someone else had hold of my arm with two arms and was 
pulling me with tenacious strength.
"I don't remember weakening. I don't remember any turning point when anyone's 
strength overcame my own. I remember simply being outnumbered. Hopelessly, by 
sheer numbers and persistence, I was stilled, surrounded, and forced out of the 
rooms. In a press of vampires, I was being forced along the passageway, and then 
I was falling down the steps, free for a moment before the narrow back doors of 
the hotel, only to be surrounded again and held tight. I could see Celeste's 
face very near me and, if I could have, I would have wounded her with my teeth. 
I was bleeding badly, and one of my wrists was held so tightly that there was no 
feeling in that hand. Madeleine was next to me sobbing still. And all of us were 
pressed into a carnage. Over and over I was struck, and still I did not lose 
consciousness. I remember clinging tenaciously to consciousness, feeling these 
blows on the back of my head, feeling the back of my head wet with blood that 
trickled down my neck as I lay on the carriage floor. I was thinking only, I can 
feel the carnage moving; I am alive; I am conscious.
"And as soon as we were dragged into the Theatre des Vampires, I was crying out 
for Armand.
"I was let go, only to stagger on the cellar steps, the horde of them behind me 
and in front of me, pushing me with menacing hands. At one point I got hold of 
Celeste, and she screamed and someone struck me from behind.
"And then I saw Lestat- the blow that was more crippling than any blow. Lestat, 
standing there in the center of the ballroom, erect, his gray eyes sharp and 
focused, his mouth lengthening in a cunning smile. Impeccably dressed he was, as 
always, and as splendid an his rich black cloak and fine linen. But those scars 
still scored every inch of his white flesh. And how they distorted the taut, 
handsome face, the fine, hard threads cutting the delicate skin above his lip, 
the lids of his eyes, the smooth rise of his forehead. And the eyes, they burned 
with a silent rage that seemed infused with vanity, an awful relentless vanity 
that said, `See what I am.'
" `This is the one?' said Santiago, thrusting me forward.
"But Lestat turned sharply to him and said in a harsh low voice, `I told you I 
wanted Claudia, the child! She was the one!' And now I saw his head moving 
involuntarily with his outburst, and his hand reaching out as if for the arm of 
a chair only to close as he drew himself up again, eyes to me.
" `Lestat,' I began, seeing now the few straws left to me. `You are alive! You 
have your life! Tell them how you treated us. . .
" `No,' he shook his head furiously. `You come back to me, Louis,' he said.
"For a moment I could not believe my ears. Some saner, more desperate part of me 
said, Reason with him, even as the sinister laughter erupted from my lips. `Are 
you mad!'
" `I'll give you back your life!' he said, his eyelids quivering with the stress 
of his words, his chest heaving, that hand going out again and closing 
impotently in the dark. `You promised me,' he said to Santiago, `I could take 
him back with me to New Orleans.' And then, as he looked from one to the other 
of them as they surrounded us, his breath became frantic, and he burst out, 
'Claudia, where is she? She's the one who did it to me, I told you!'
" `By and by,' said Santiago. And when he reached out for Lestat, Lestat drew 
back and almost lost his balance. He had found the chair arm he needed and stood 
holding fast to it, his eyes closed, regaining his control.
" `But he helped her, aided her . . ' said Santiago, drawing nearer to him. 
Lestat looked up.
"'No,' he said. 'Louis, you must come back to me. There's something I must tell 
you . . . about that night in the swamp.' But then he stopped and looked about 
again, as though he were caged, wounded, desperate.
" `Listen to me, Lestat,' I began now. `You let her go, you free her . . . and I 
will . . . I'll return to you,' I said, the words sounding hollow, metallic. I 
tried to take a step towards him, to make my eyes hard and unreadable, to feel 
my power emanating from them like two beams of light. He was looking at me, 
studying me, struggling all the while against his own fragility. And Celeste had 
her hand on my wrist. `You must tell them,' I went on, `how you treated us, that 
we didn't know the laws, that she didn't know of other vampires,' I said. And I 
was thinking steadily, as that mechanical voice came out of me: Armand must 
return tonight, Armand must come back. He will stop this, he won't let it go on.
"'There was a sound then of something dragging across the floor. I could hear 
Madeleine's exhausted crying. I looked around and saw her in a chair, and when 
she saw my eyes on her, her terror seemed to increase. She tried to rise but 
they stopped her. `Lestat,' I said. `What do you want of me? I'll give it to 
you. . .
"And then I saw the thing that was making the noise. And Lestat had seen it too. 
It was a coffin with large iron locks on it that was being dragged into the 
room. I understood at once. `Where is Armand?' I said desperately.
" `She did it to me, Louis. She did it to me. You didn't! She has to dies' said 
Lestat, his voice becoming thin, rasping, as if it were an effort for him to 
speak. `Get that thing away from here, he's coming home with me,' he said 
furiously to Santiago. And Santiago only laughed, and Celeste laughed, and the 
laughter seemed to infect them all.
" `You promised me,' said Lestat to them.
" `I promised you nothing,' said Santiago.
" `They've made a fool of you,' I said to him bitterly as they were opening the 
coffin. 'A fool of you! You must reach Armand, Armand 13 the leader here,' I 
burst out. But he didn't seem to understand.
"What happened then was desperate axed clouded and miserable, my kicking at 
them, struggling to free my arms, raging against them that Armand would stop 
what they were doing, that they dare not hurt Claudia. Yet they forced me down 
into the coffin, my frantic efforts serving no purpose against them except to 
take my mind off the sound of Madeleine's cries, her awful wailing cries, and 
the fear that at any moment Claudia's cries might be added to them. I remember 
rising against the crushing lid, holding it at bay for an instant before it was 
forced shut on me and the locks were being shut with the grinding of metal and 
keys. Words of long ago came back to me, a strident and smiling Lestat in that 
faraway, trouble-free place where the three of us had, quarreled together: `A 
starving child is a frightful sight . . . a starving vampire even worse. They'd 
hear her screams in Paris.' And my wet and trembling body went limp in the 
suffocating coffin, and I said, Armand will not let it happen; there isn't a 
place secure enough for them to place us.
"The coffin was lifted, there was the scraping of boots, the swinging from side 
to side; my arms braced against the sides of the box, my eyes shut perhaps for a 
moment, I was uncertain. I told myself not to reach out for the sides, not to 
feel the thin margin of air between my face and the lid; and I felt the coffin 
swing and tilt as their steps found the stairs. Vainly I tried to make out 
Madeleine's cries, for it seemed that she was crying for Claudia, calling out to 
her as if she could help us all. Call for Armand; he must come home this night, 
I thought desperately. And only the thought of the awful humiliation of hearing 
my own cry closed in with me, flooding my ears, yet locked in with me, prevented 
me from calling out.
"But another thought had come over me even as 1'd phrased those words: What if 
he did not come? What if somewhere in that mansion he had a coffin hidden to 
which he returned . . . B And then it seemed my body broke suddenly, without 
warning, from the control of my mind, and I flailed at the wood around me, 
struggling to turn over and pit the strength of my back against the coffin lid. 
Yet I could not: it was too close; and my head fell back on the boards, and the 
sweat poured down my back and sides.
 "Madeleine's cries were gone. All I heard were the boots, and my own breathing. 
Then, tomorrow night he will 
come-yes, tomorrow night and they will tell him, and he will find us and release 
us. The coffin swayed. The smell 
of water filled my nostrils, its coolness palpable through the close heat of the 
coffin; and then with the smell of 
the water was the smell of the deep earth. The coffin was set down roughly, and 
my limbs ached and I rubbed the 
backs of my arms with my hands, struggling not to touch the coffin lid, not to 
sense how close it was, afraid of my 
own feat rising to panic, to terror.
"I thought they would leave me now, but they did not. They were near at hand and 
bogy, and another odor came to my nostrils which was raw and not known to me. 
But then, as I lay very still, I realized they were laying bricks and that the 
odor came from the mortar. Slowly, carefully, I brought my hand up to wipe my 
face. All right, then, tomorrow night, I reasoned with myself, even as my 
shoulders seemed to grow large against the coffin walls. All right, then, 
tomorrow night he will come; and until then this is merely the confines of my 
own coffin, the price I've paid for all of this, night after night after night.
`But the tears were welling in my eyes, and I could see myself flailing again at 
the wood; and y head was turning from side to side, my mind rushing on to 
tomorrow and the night after and the night after that. And then, as if to 
distract myself from this madness, I thought of Claudia-only to feel her arms 
around me in the dim light of those rooms in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, only to 
see the curve of her cheek in the light, the soft, languid flutter of her 
eyelashes, the silky touch of her lip. My body stiffened, my feet kicked at the 
boards. The sound of the bricks was gone, and the muffled steps were gone. And I 
cried out for her, 'Claudia,' until my neck was twisted with pain as I tossed, 
and my nails had dug into my palms; and slowly, like an icy stream, the 
paralysis of sleep came over me. I tried to call out to Armand-foolishly, 
desperately, only dimly aware as my lids grew heavy and my hands lay limp that 
the sleep was on him too somewhere, that he lay still in his resting place. One 
last time I struggled. My eyes saw the dark, my hands felt the wood. But I was 
weak. And then there was nothing."
 
"I awoke to a voice. It was distant but distinct. It said my name twice. For an 
instant I didn't know where I was. I'd been dreaming, something desperate which 
was threatening to vanish completely without the slightest clue to what it had 
been, and something terrible which I was eager, willing to let go. Then I opened 
my eyes and felt the top of the coffin. I knew where I was at the same instant 
that, mercifully, I knew it was Armand who was calling me. I answered him, but 
my voice was locked in with me and it was deafening. In a moment of terror, I 
thought, He's searching for me, and I can't tell him that I am here. But then I 
heard him speaking to me, telling me not to be afraid. And I heard a loud noise. 
And another. And there was a cracking sound, and then the thunderous falling of 
the bricks. It seemed several of them struck the coffin. And then I heard them 
lifted off one by one. It sounded as though he were pulling off the locks by the 
nails.
"The hard wood of the top creaked. A pinpoint of light sparkled before my eyes. 
I drew breath from it, and felt the sweat break out on my face. The lid creaked 
open and for an instant I was blinded; then I was sitting up, seeing the bright 
light of a lamp through my fingers.
" `Hurry,' he said to me. 'Don't make a sound'
" `But where are we going?' I asked. I could see a passage of rough bricks 
stretching out from the doorway he'd broken down. And all along that passage 
were doors which were sealed, as this door had been. I had a vision at once of 
coffins behind those bricks, of vampires starved and decayed there. But Armand 
was pulling me up, telling me again to make no sound; we were creeping along the 
passage. He stopped at a wooden door, and then he extinguished the lamp. It was 
completely black for an instant until the seam of light beneath the door 
brightened. He opened the door so gently the hinges did not make a sound. I 
could hear my own breathing now, and I tried to stop it. We were entering that 
lower passageway which led to his cell. But as I raced along behind him I became 
aware of one awful truth. He was rescuing me, but me alone. I put out my hand to 
stop him, but he only pulled me after him. Only when we stood in the alleyway 
beside the Theatre des Vampires was I able to make him stop. And even then, he 
was on the verge of going on. He began shaking his head even before I spoke.
" `I can't save her!' he said.
" `You don't honestly expect me to leave without her! They have her in there!' I 
was horrified. 'Armand, you must save her! You have no choice!'
" `Why do you say this?' he answered. `I don't have the power, you must 
understand. They'll rise against me. There is no reason why they should not. 
Louis, I tell you, I cannot save her. I will only risk losing you. You can't go 
back.'
"I refused to admit this could be true. I had no hope other than Armand. But I 
can truthfully say that I was beyond being afraid. I knew only that I had to get 
Claudia back or die in the effort. It was really very simple; not a matter of 
courage at all. And I knew also, could tell in everything about Armand's 
passivity, the manner in which he spoke, that he would follow me if I returned, 
that he would not try to prevent me.
"I was right. I was rushing back into the passage and he was just behind me, 
heading for the stairway to the ballroom. I could hear the ether vampires. I 
could hear all manner of sounds. The Paris traffic. What sounded very much like 
a congregation in the vault of the theater above. And then, as I reached the top 
of the steps, I saw Celeste in the door of the ballroom. She held one of those 
stage masks in her hand. She was merely looking at me. She did not appear 
alarmed. In fact, she appeared strangely indifferent.
"If she had rushed at me, if she had sounded a general alarm, these things I 
could have understood. But she did nothing. She stepped backwards into the 
ballroom; she turned, seeming to enjoy the subtle movement of her skirts, 
seeming to turn for the love of making her skirts flare out, and she drifted in 
a widening circle to the center of the room. She put the mask to her face, and 
said softly behind the painted skull, `Lestat . . . it is your friend Louis come 
calling. Look sharp, Lestat!' She dropped the mask, and there was a ripple of 
laughter from somewhere. I saw they were all about the room, shadowy things, 
seated here and there, standing together. And Lestat, in an armchair, sat with 
his shoulders hunched and his face turned away from me. It seemed he was working 
something with his hands, something I couldn't see; and slowly he looked up, his 
full yellow hair falling into his eyes. There was fear in them. It was 
undeniable. Now he was looking at Armand. And Armand was moving silently through 
the room with slow, steady steps, and all of the vampires moved back away from 
him, watching him. `Bonsoir, Monsieur,' Celeste bowed to him as he passed her, 
that mask in her hand like a scepter. He did not look at her in particular. He 
looked down at Lestat. `Are you satisfied?' he asked him.
"Lestat's gray eyes seemed to regard Armand with wonder, and his lips straggled 
to form a word. I could see that his eyes were filling with tears. `Yes . . : he 
whispered now, his hand struggling with the thing he concealed beneath his black 
cloak. But then he looked at me, and the tears spilled down his face. `Louis,' 
he said, his voice deep and rich now with what seemed an unbearable struggle. 
`Please, you must listen to me. You must come back. . . .' And then, bowing his 
head, he grimaced with shame.
"Santiago was laughing somewhere. Armand was saying softly to Lestat that he 
must get out, leave Paris; he was outcast.
"And Lestat sat there with his eyes closed, his face transfigured with his pain. 
It seemed the double of Lestat, some wounded, feeling creature I'd never known. 
`Please,' he said, the voice eloquent and gentle as he implored me.
" `I can't talk to you here! I can't make you understand. You'll come with me . 
. . for only a little while . . . until I am myself again?'
" `This is madness! . . .' I said, my hands rising suddenly to my temples. 
`Where is she! Where is she!' I looked about me, at their still, passive faces, 
those inscrutable smiles. `Lestat ' I turned him now, grabbing at the black wool 
of his lapels:
"And then I' saw the think in his hands. I knew what it was. And in an instant 
rd ripped it from him and was staring at it, at the fragile silken thing that it 
was-Claudia's yellow dress. His hand rose to his lips, his face turned away. And 
the soft, subdued sops broke from him as he sat back while I stared at him, 
while I stared at the dress. My fingers moved slowly over the tears in it, the 
stains of blood; my hands closing, trembling as I crushed it against my chest.
"For a long moment it seemed I simply stood there; time had no bearing upon me 
nor upon those shifting vampires with their light, ethereal laughter filling my 
ears. I remember thinking that I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but I 
wouldn't let go of the dress, couldn't stop trying to make it so small that it 
was hidden within my hands. I remember a row of candles burning, an uneven row 
coming to light one by one against the painted walls. A door stood open to the 
rain, and all the candies spluttered and blew on the wind as if the flames were 
being lifted from the wicks. But they clung to the wicks and were all right. I 
knew that Claudia was through the doorway. The candles moved. The vampires had 
hold of them. Santiago had a candle and was bowing to me and gesturing for me to 
pass through the door. I was barely aware of him. I didn't care about him or the 
others at all. Something in me said, If you care about them you will go mad. And 
they don't matter, really. She matters. Where is she? Find her. And their 
laughter was remote, and it seemed to have a color and a shape but to be part of 
nothing.
"Then I saw something through the open doorway which was something I'd seen 
before, a long, long time ago. No one knew of this thing I'd seen years before 
except myself. No. Lestat knew. But it didn't matter. He wouldn't know now or 
understand. That he and I had seen this thing, standing at the door of that 
brick kitchen in the Rue Royale, two wet shriveled things that had been alive, 
mother and daughter in one another's arms, the murdered pair on the kitchen 
floor. But these two lying under the gentle rain were Madeleine and Claudia, and 
Madeleine's lovely red hair mingled with the gold of Claudia's hair, which 
stirred and glistened in the wind that sucked through the open doorway. Only 
that which was living had been burnt away-not the hair, not the long, empty 
velvet dress, not the small bloodstained chemise with its eyelets of white lace. 
And the blackened, burnt, and drawn thing that was Madeleine -still bore the 
stamp of her living face, and the hand that clutched at the child was whole like 
a mummy's hand. But the child, the ancient one, my Claudia, was ashes.
"A cry rose in me, a wild, consuming cry that came from the bowels of my being, 
rising up like the wind in that narrow place, the wind that swirled the rains 
teeming on those ashes, beating at the trace of a tiny hand against the bricks, 
that golden hair lifting, those loose strands rising, flying upwards. And a blow 
struck me even as I cried out; and I had hold of something that I believed to be 
Santiago, and I was pounding, against him, destroying him, twisting that 
grinning white face around with hands from which he couldn't free himself, hands 
against which he railed, crying out, his cries mingling with my cries, his boots 
coming down into those ashes, as I threw him backwards away from them, my own 
eyes blinded with the rain, with my tears, until he lay back away from me, and I 
was reaching out for him even as he held out his hand. And the one I was 
struggling against was Armand. Armand, who was forcing me out of the tiny 
graveyard into the whirling colors of the ballroom, the cries, the mingling 
voices, that searing, silver laughter.
"And Lestat was calling out, `Louis, wait for me; Louis, I must talk to you!'
"I could see Armand's rich, brown eye close to mine, and I felt weak all over 
and vaguely aware that Madeleine and Claudia were dead, his voice saying softly, 
perhaps soundlessly, `I could not prevent it, I could not prevent it. . : And 
they were dead, simply dead. And I was losing consciousness. Santiago was near 
them somewhere there where they were still, that hair lifted on the wind, swept 
across those bricks, unraveling locks. But I was losing consciousness.
"I could not-gather their bodies up with me, could not take them out. Armand had 
his arm around my back, his hand under my arm, and he, was all but carrying me 
through some hollow wooden echoing place, and the smells of the street were 
rising, the fresh smell of the horses and the leather, and there were the 
gleaming carriages stopped there. And I could see myself clearly running down 
the Boulevard des Capucines with a small coffin under my arm and the people 
making way for me and dozens of people rising around the crowded tables of the 
open cafe and a man lifting his arm. It seemed I stumbled then, the Louis whom 
Armand held in his arm, and again I saw his brown eyes looking at me, and felt 
that drowsiness, that sinking. And yet I walked, I moved, I saw the gleam of my 
own boots on the pavement. `Is he mad, that he says these things to me?' I was 
asking of Lestat, my voice shrill and angry, even the sound of it giving me some 
comfort. I was laughing, laughing loudly. `He's stark-raving mad to speak to me 
in this manned Did you hear him?' I demanded. And Armand's eye said, Sleep. I 
wanted to say something about Madeleine and Claudia, that we could not leave 
them there, and I felt that cry again rising inside of me, that cry that pushed 
everything else out of its way, my teeth clenched to keep it in, because it was 
so loud and so full it would destroy me if I let it go.
"And then I conceived of everything too clearly. We were walking now, a 
belligerent, blind sort of walking that men do when they are wildly drunk and 
filled with hatred for others, while at the same time they feel invincible. I 
was walking in such a manner through New Orleans the night I'd first encountered 
Lestat, that drunken walking which is a battering against things, which is 
miraculously sure-footed and finds its path. I saw a drunken man's hands 
fumbling miraculously with a match. Flame touched to the pipe, the smoke drawn 
in. I was standing at a cafe window. The man was drawing on his pipe. He was not 
at all drunk. Armand stood beside me waiting, and we were in the crowded 
Boulevard des Capucines. Or was it the Boulevard do Temple? I wasn't sure. I was 
outraged that their bodies remained there in that vile place. I saw Santiago's 
foot touching the blackened burned thing that had been my child! I was crying 
out through clenched teeth, and the man had risen from his table and steam 
spread out on the glass in front of his face. `Get away from me,' I was saying 
to Armand. `Damn you into hell, don't come near me. I warn you, don't come near 
me.' I was walking away from him up the boulevard, and I could see a man and a 
woman stepping aside for me, the man with his arm out to protect the woman.
"Then I was running. People saw me running. I wondered how it appeared to them, 
what wild, white thing they saw that moved too fast for their eyes. I remember 
that by the time I stopped, I was weak and sick, and my veins were burning as if 
I were starved. I thought of killing, and the thought filled me with revulsion. 
I was sitting on the stone steps beside a church, at one of those small side 
doors, carved into the stone, which was bolted and locked for the night. The 
rain had abated. Or so it seemed. And the street was dreary and quiet, though a 
man passed a long way off with a bright, black umbrella. Armand stood at a 
distance under the trees. Behind him it seemed there was a great expanse of 
trees and wet grasses and moist rising as if the ground were warm.
"By thinking of only one thing, the sickness in my stomach and head and the 
tightening in my throat, was I able to return to a state of calm. By the time 
these things had died away and I was feeling clear again, I was aware of all 
that had happened, the great distance we'd come from the theater, and that the 
remains of Madeleine and Claudia were still there. Victims of a holocaust in 
each other's arms. And I felt resolute and very near to my own destruction.
" `I could not prevent it,' Armand said softly to me. And I looked up to see his 
face unutterably sad. He looked away from me as if he felt it was futile to try 
to convince me of this, and I could feel his overwhelming sadness, his near 
defeat. I had the feeling that if I were to vent all my anger on him he would do 
little to resist me. And I could feel that detachment, that passivity in him as 
something pervasive which was at the root of what he insisted to me again, `I 
could not have prevented it.'
" `Oh, but you could have prevented it!' I said softly. `You know full well that 
you could have. You were the leader! You were the only one who knew the limits 
of your own power. They didn't know. They didn't understand. Your understanding 
surpassed theirs.'
"He looked away still. But I could see the effect of my words on him. I could 
see the weariness in his face, the dull lusterless sadness of his eyes.
" `You held sway over them. They feared you!' I went on. `You could have stopped 
them if you'd been willing to use that power even beyond your own selfprescribed 
limits. It was your sense of yourself you would not violate. Your own precious 
conception of truth! I understand you perfectly. I see in you the reflection of 
myself!'
"His eyes moved gently to engage mine. But he said nothing. The pain of his face 
was terrible. It was softened and desperate with pain and on the verge of some 
terrible explicit emotion he would not be able to control. He was in fear of 
that emotion. I was not. He was feeling my pain with that great spellbinding 
power of his which surpassed mine. I was not feeling his pain. It did not matter 
to me.
" `I understand you only too well . . .' I said. `That passivity in me has been 
the core of it all, the real evil. That weakness, that refusal to compromise a 
fractured and stupid morality, that awful pride! For that, I let myself become 
the thing I am, when I knew it was wrong. For that, I let Claudia become the 
vampire she became, when I knew it was wrong. For that, I stood by and let her 
kill Lestat, when 1 knew that was wrong, the very thing that was her undoing. I 
lifted not a finger to prevent it. And Madeleine, Madeleine, I let her come to 
that, when I should never have made her a creature like ourselves. I knew that 
was wrong! Well, I tell you I am no longer that passive, weak creature that has 
spun evil from evil till the web is vast and thick while I remain its stultified 
victim. It's over! I know now what I must do. And I warn you, for whatever mercy 
you've shown me in digging me out of that grave tonight where I would have died: 
Do not seek your cell in the Theatre des Vampires again. Do not go near it."'
"I didn't wait to hear his answer. Perhaps he never attempted one. I don't know. 
I left him without looking back. If he followed me I was not conscious of it. I 
did not seek to know. I did not care.
"It was to the cemetery in Montmartre that I retreated. Why that place, I'm not 
certain, except that it wasn't far from the Boulevard des Capucines, and 
Montmartre was countryfied then, and dark and peaceful compared to the 
metropolis. Wandering among the low houses with their kitchen gardens, I killed 
without the slightest measure of satisfaction, and then sought out the coffin 
where I was to lie by day in the cemetery. I scraped the remains out of it with 
my bare hands and lay down to a bed of foulness, of damp, of the stench of 
death. I cannot say this gave me comfort. Rather, it gave me what I wanted. 
Closeted in that dark, smelling the earth, away from all humans and all living 
human forms, I gave myself over to everything that invaded and stifled my 
senses. And, in so doing, gave myself over to my grief.
"But that was short.
"When the cold, gray winter sun had set the next night, I was awake, feeling the 
tingling numbness leave me soon, as it does in winter, feeling the dark, living 
things that inhabited the coffin scurrying around me, fleeing my resurrection. I 
emerged slowly under the faint moon, savoring the coldness, the utter smoothness 
of the marble slab I shifted to escape. And, wandering out of the graves and out 
of the cemetery, I went over a plan in my mind, a plan on which I was willing to 
gamble my life with the powerful freedom of a being who truly does not care for 
that life, who has the extraordinary strength of being willing to die.
"In a kitchen garden I saw something, something that had only been vague in my 
thoughts until I had my hands on it. It was a small scythe, its sharp curved 
blade still caked with green weeds from the last mowing. And once I'd wiped it 
clean and run my finger along the sharp blade, it was as if my plan came clear 
to me and I could move fast to my other errands: the getting of a carriage and a 
driver who could do my bidding for days-dazzled by the cash I gave him and the 
promises of more; the removing of my chest from the Hotel Saint-Gabriel to the 
inside of that carriage; and the procuring of all the other things which I 
needed. And then there were the long hours of the night, when I could pretend to 
drink with my driver and talk with him and obtain his expensive cooperation in 
driving me at dawn from Paris to Fontainebleau. I slept within the carriage, 
where my delicate health required I not be disturbed under any circumstances 
-this privacy being so important that I was more than willing ,to add a generous 
sum to the amount I was already paying him simply for his not touching even the 
door handle of the carriage until I emerged from it.
"And when I was convinced he was in agreement and quite drank enough to be 
oblivious to almost everything but the gathering up of the reins for the journey 
for Fountainebleau, we drove slowly, cautiously, into the street of the Theatre 
des Vampires and waited some distance away for the sky to begin to grow light.
"The theater was shut up and locked against the coming day. I crept towards it 
when the air and the light told me I had at most fifteen minutes to execute my 
plan. I knew that, closeted far within, the vampires of the theater were in 
their coffins already. And that even if one late vampire lingered on the verge 
of going to bed, he would not hear these first preparations. Quickly I put 
pieces of wood against the bolted doors. Quickly I drove in the nails, which 
then locked these doors from the outside. A passer-by took some note of what I 
did but went on, believing me perhaps to be boarding up the establishment with 
the authority of the owner. I didn't know. I did know, however, that before I 
was finished I might encounter those ticket-sellers, those ushers, those men who 
swept up after, and might well remain inside to guard the vampires in their 
daily sleep.
"It was of those men I was thinking as I led the carriage up to Armand's alley 
and left it there, taking with me two small barrels of kerosene to Armand's 
door.
"The key admitted me easily as rd hoped, and once inside the lower passage, I 
opened the door of his cell to find he was not there. The coffin was gone. In 
fact, everything was gone but the furnishings, including the dead boy's enclosed 
bed. Hastily I opened one barrel and, rolling the other before me towards the 
stairs, I hurried along, splashing the exposed beams with kerosene and flinging 
it on the wooden doors of the other cells. The smell of it was strong, stronger 
and more powerful than any sound I might have made to alert anyone. And, though 
I stood stark still at the stairs with the barrels and the scythe, listening, I 
heard nothing, nothing of those guards I presumed to be there, nothing of the 
vampires themselves. And clutching the handle of the scythe I ventured slowly 
upwards until I stood in the door of the ballroom. No one was there to see me 
splash the kerosene on the horsehair chairs or on the draperies' or to see me 
hesitate just for an instant at that doorway of the small yard where Madeleine 
and Claudia had been killed. Oh, how I wanted to open that door. It so tempted 
me that for a minute I almost forgot my plan. I almost dropped the barrels and 
turned the knob. But I could see the light through the cracks of the old wood of 
the door. And I knew I had to go on. Madeleine and Claudia were not there. They 
were dead. And what would I have done had I opened that doorway, had I been 
confronted again with those remains, that matted, disheveled golden hair? There 
was no time, no purpose. I was running through dark corridors I hadn't explored 
before, bathing old wooden doors with the kerosene, certain that the vampires 
lay closeted within, rushing on cat feet into the theater itself, where a cold, 
gray light, seeping from the bolted front entrance, sped me on to fling a dark 
-stain across the great velvet stage curtain, the padded chairs, the draperies 
of the lobby doors.
"And finally the barrel was empty and thrown away, and I was pulling out the 
crude torch I'd made, putting my match to its kerosene-drenched rags, and 
setting the chairs alight, the flames licking their thick silk and padding as I 
ran towards the stage and sent the fire rushing up that dark curtain into a 
cold, sucking draft.
"In seconds the theater blazed as with the light of day, and the whole frame of 
it seemed to creak and groan as the fire roared up the walls, licking the great 
proscenium arch, the plaster curlicues of the overhanging boxes. But I had no 
time to admire it, to savor the smell and the sound of it, the sight of the 
nooks and crannies coming to light in the fierce illumination that would soon 
consume them. I was geeing to the lower floor again, thrusting the torch into 
the horsehair couch of the ballroom, into the curtains, into anything that would 
burn.
"Someone thundered on the boards above-in rooms I'd never seen. And then I heard 
the unmistakable opening of a door. But it was too late, I told myself, gripping 
both the scythe and the torch. The building was alight. They would be destroyed. 
I ran for the stairs, a distant cry rising over the crackling and roaring of the 
flames, my torch scraping the kerosene-soaked rafters above me, the flames 
enveloping the old wood, curling against the damp ceiling. It was Santiago's 
cry, I was sure of it; and then, as I hit the lower floor, I saw him above, 
behind me, coming down the stairs, the smoke filling the stairwell around him, 
his eyes watering, his throat thickened with his choking, his hand out towards 
me as he stammered, `You . . .you . . . damn you!' And I froze, narrowing my 
eyes against the smoke, feeling the water rising in them, burning in them, but 
never letting go of his image for an instant, the vampire using all his power 
now to fly at me with such speed that he would become invisible. And as the dark 
thing that was his clothes rushed down, I swung the scythe and saw it strike his 
neck and felt the weight of his neck and saw him fall sideways, both hands 
reaching for the appalling wound. The air was full of cries, of screams, and a 
white face loomed above Santiago, a mask of terror. Some other vampire ran 
through the passage ahead of me towards that secret alleyway door. But I stood 
there poised, staring at Santiago, seeing him rise despite the wound. And I 
swung the scythe again, catching him easily. And there was no wound. Just two 
hands groping for a head that was no longer there.
"And the head, blood coursing from the torn neck, the eyes staring wild under 
the flaming rafters, the dark silky hair matted and wet with blood, fell at my 
feet. I struck it hard with my boot, I sent it flying along the passage. And I 
ran after it; the torch and the scythe thrown aside as my arms went up to 
protect me from the blaze of white light that flooded the stairs to the alley.
"The rain descended in shimmering needles into my eyes, eyes that squinted to 
see the dark outline of the carriage flicker against the sky. The slumped driver 
straightened at my hoarse command, his clumsy hand going instinctively for the 
whip, and the carriage lurched as I pulled open the door, the horses driving 
forward fast as I grappled with the lid of the chest, my body thrown roughly to 
one side, my burnt hands slipping down into the cold protecting silk, the lid 
coming down into concealing darkness.
"The pace of the horses increased driving away from the corner of the burning 
building. Yet I could still smell the smoke; it choked me; it burnt my eyes and 
my lungs, even as my hands were burnt and my forehead was burnt from the first 
diffused light of the sun.
"But we were driving on, away from the smoke and the cries. We were leaving 
Paris. I had done it. The Theatre des Vampires was burning to the ground,
"And as I felt my head fall back, I saw Claudia and Madeleine again in one 
another's arms in that grin yard, and I said to them softly, bending down to the 
soft heads of hair that glistened in the candlelight, `I couldn't take you away. 
I couldn't take you. But they will lie ruined and dead all around you. If the 
fire doesn't consume them, it will be the sun. If they are not burnt out, then 
it will be the people who will come to fight the fire who will find them and 
expose them to the light of day. But I promise you, they will all die as you 
have died, everyone who was closeted there this dawn will die. And they are the 
only deaths I have caused in my long life which are both exquisite and good.' "
Two nights later I returned. I had to see that rain-flooded cellar where every 
brick was scorched, crumbling, where a few skeletal rafters jabbed at the sky 
like stakes. Those monstrous murals that once enclosed the ballroom were blasted 
fragments in the rubble, a painted face here, a patch of angel's wing there, the 
only identifiable things that remained.
"With the evening newspapers, I pushed my way to the back of a crowded little 
theater cafe across the street; and there, under the cover of the dim gas lamps 
and thick cigarsmoke, I read the accounts of the holocaust. Few bodies were 
found in the burnt-out theater, but clothing and costumes had been scattered 
everywhere, as though the famous vampire mummers had in fact vacated the theater 
in haste long before the fire. In other words, only the younger vampire had left 
their bones; the ancient ones had suffered total obliteration. No mention of an 
eye-witness or a surviving victim. How could there have been?
"Yet something bothered me considerably. I did not fear any vampires who had 
escaped. I had no desire to hunt them out if they had. That most of the crew had 
died I was certain. But why had there been no human guards? I was certain 
Santiago had mentioned guards, and I'd supposed them to be the ushers and 
doormen who staffed the theater before the performance. And I had even been 
prepared to encounter them with my scythe. But they had not been there. It was 
strange. And my mind was not entirely comfortable with the strangeness.
"But, finally, when I put the papers aside and sat thinking these things over, 
the strangeness of it didn't matter. What mattered was that I was more utterly 
alone in the world than I had ever been in all my life. That Claudia was gone 
beyond reprieve. And I had less reason to live than I'd ever had, and less 
desire.
"And yet my sorrow. did not overwhelm me, did not actually visit me, did not 
make of me the wracked and desperate creature I might have expected to become. 
Perhaps it was not possible to sustain the torment I'd experienced when I saw 
Claudia's burnt remains. Perhaps it was not possible to know that and exist over 
any period of time. I wondered vaguely, as the hours passed, as the smoke of the 
cafe grew thicker and the faded curtain of the little lamplit stage rose and 
fell, and robust women sang there, the light glittering on their paste jewels, 
their rich, soft voices often plaintive, exquisitely sad-I wondered vaguely what 
it would be to feel this loss, this outrage, and be justified in it, be 
deserving of sympathy, of solace. I would not have told my woe to a living 
creature. My own tears meant nothing to me.
"Where to go then, if not to die? It was strange how the answer came to me. 
Strange how I wandered out of the cafe then, circling the ruined theater, 
wandering finally towards the broad Avenue Napoleon and following it towards the 
palace of the Louvre. It was as if that place called to me, and yet I had never 
been inside its walls. I'd passed its long facade a thousand times, wishing that 
I could live as a mortal man for one day to move through those many rooms and 
see those many magnificent paintings. I was bent on it now, possessed only of 
some vague notion that in works of art I could find some solace while bringing 
nothing of death to what was inanimate and yet magnificently possessed of the 
spirit of life itself.
"Somewhere along the Avenue Napoleon, I heard the step behind me which I knew to 
be Armand's. He was signaling, letting me know that he was near. Yet I did 
nothing other than slow my pace and let him fall into step with me, and for a 
long while we walked, saying nothing. I dared not look at him. Of course, I'd 
been thinking of him all the while, and how if we were men and Claudia had been 
my love I might have fallen helpless in his arms finally, the need to share some 
common grief so strong, so consuming. The dam threatened to break now; and yet 
it did not break. I was numbed and I walked as one numbed.
" `You know what I've done,' I said finally. We had turned off the avenue and I 
could see ahead of me the long row of double columns on the facade of the Royal 
Museum. `You removed your coffin as I warned you. '
" `Yes,' he answered. There was a sudden, unmistakable comfort in the sound of 
his voice. It weakened me. But I was simply too remote from pain, too tired.
" `And yet you are here with me now. Do you mean to avenge them?'
" `No,' he said.
" `They were your fellows, you were their leader,' I said. `Yet you didn't warn 
them I was out for them, as I warned you?'
" `No,' he said.
" `But surely you despise me for it. Surely you respect some rule, some 
allegiance to your own kind.'
" `No,' he said softly.
"It was amazing to me how logical his response was, even though I couldn't 
explain it or understand it.
"And something came clear to me out of the remote regions of my own relentless 
considerations. `There were guards; there were those ushers who slept in the 
theater. Why weren't they there when I entered? Why weren't they there to 
protect the sleeping vampires?'
" `Because they were in my employ and I discharged them. I sent them away,' 
Armand said.
"I stopped. He showed no concern at my facing him, and as soon as our eyes met I 
wished the world were not one black empty ruin of ashes and death. I wished it 
were fresh and beautiful, and that we were both living and had love to give each 
other. `You did this, knowing what I planned to do?
" `Yes,' he said.
" `But you were their leader! They trusted you. They believed in you. They lived 
with you!' I said. `I don't understand you . . . why . . .?'
" `Think of any answer you like,' he said calmly and sensitively, as if he 
didn't wish to bruise me with any accusation or disdain, but wanted me merely to 
consider this literally. `I can think of many. Think of the one you need and 
believe it. It's as likely as any other. I shall give you the real reason for 
what I did, which is the least true: I was leaving Paris. The theater belonged 
to me. So I discharged them.'
" `But with what you knew . . .'
" `I told you, it was the actual reason and it was the least true,' he said 
patiently.
" `Would you destroy me as easily as you let them be destroyed?' I demanded.
" `Why should I?' he asked.
" `My God,' I whispered.
" `You're much changed,' he said. `But in a way, you are much the same.'
"I walked on for a while and then, before the entrance to the Louvre, I stopped. 
At first it seemed to me that its many windows were dark and silver with the 
moonlight and the thin rain. But then I thought I saw a faint light moving 
within, as though a guard walked among the treasures. I envied him completely. 
And I fixed my thoughts an him obdurately, that guard, calculating how a vampire 
might get to him, how take his life and his lantern and his keys. The plan was 
confusion. I was incapable of plans. I had made only one real plan in my life, 
and it was finished.
"And then finally I surrendered. I turned to Armand again and let my eyes 
penetrate his eyes, and let him draw close to me as if he meant to make me his 
victim, and I bowed my head and felt his firm arm around my shoulder. And, 
remembering suddenly and keenly Claudia's words, what were very nearly her last 
. words -that admission that she knew that I could love Armand because I had 
been able to love even her-those words struck me as rich and ironical, more 
filled with meaning than she could have guessed.
" `Yes,' I said softly to him, `that is the crowning evil, that we can even go 
so far as to love each other, you and I. And who else would show us a particle 
of love, a particle of compassion or mercy? Who else, knowing us as we know each 
other, could do anything but destroy us? Yet we can love each other.'
"And for a long moment, he stood there looking at me, drawing nearer, his head 
gradually inclining to one side, his lips parted as if he meant to speak. But 
then he only smiled and shook his head gently to confess he didn't understand.
"But I wasn't thinking of him anymore. I had one of those rare moments when it 
seemed I thought of nothing. My mind had no shape. I saw that the rain had 
stopped. I saw that the air was clear and cold. That the street was luminous. 
And I wanted to enter the Louvre. I formed words to tell Armand this, to ask him 
if he might help me do what was necessary to have the Louvre till dawn.
"He thought it a very simple request. He said only he wondered why I had waited 
so long."
"We left Paris very soon after that. I told Armand that I wanted to return to 
the Mediterranean-not to Greece, as I had so long dreamed. I wanted to go to 
Egypt. I wanted to see the desert there and, more importantly, I wanted to see 
the pyramids and the graves of the kings. I wanted to make contact with those 
grave-thieves who know snore of the graves than do scholars, and I wanted to go 
down into the graves yet unopened and see the kings as they were buried, see 
those furnishings and works of art stored with them, and the paintings on their 
walls. Armand was more than willing. And we took leave of Paris early one 
evening by carriage without the slightest hint of ceremony.
"I had done one thing which I should note. I had gone back to my rooms in the 
hotel Saint-Gabriel. It was my purpose to take up some things of Claudia and 
Madeleine and put them into coffins and have graves prepared for them in the 
cemetery of Montmartre. I did not do this. I stayed a short while in the rooms, 
where all was neat and put right by the staff, so that it seemed Madeleine and 
Claudia might return at any time. Madeleine's embroidery ring lay with her 
bundles of thread on a chair-side table. I looked at that and at everything 
else, and my task seemed meaningless. So I left.
"But something had occurred to me there; or, rather, something I had already 
been aware of merely became clearer. I had gone to the Louvre that night to lay 
down my soul, to find some transcendent pleasure that would obliterate pain and 
make me utterly forget ever! myself. I'd been upheld in this. As I stood on the 
sidewalk before the doors of the hotel waiting for the carriage that would take 
me to meet Armand, I saw the people who walked there-the restless boulevard 
crowd of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, the hawkers of papers, the carriers 
of luggage, the drivers of carriages-all these in a new light. Before, all art 
had held for me the promise of a deeper understanding of the human heart. Now 
the human heart meant nothing. I did not denigrate it. I simply forgot it. The 
magnificent paintings of the Louvre were not for me intimately connected with 
the hands that had painted them. They were cut loose and dead like children 
turned to stone. Like Claudia, severed from her mother, preserved for decades in 
pearl and hammered gold. Like Madeleine's dolls. And of course, like Claudia and 
Madeleine and myself, they could all be reduced to ashes."
 
PART IV
 
"And that is the end of the story, really.
"Of course, I know you wonder what happened to us afterwards. What became of 
Armand? Where did I go? What did I do? But I tell you nothing really happened. 
Nothing that wasn't merely inevitable. And my journey through the Louvre that 
last night I've described to you, that was merely prophetic.
"I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one great source of 
change which is humanity. And even in my love and absorption with the beauty of 
the world, I sought to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity. I 
drank of the beauty of the world as a vampire drinks. I was satisfied. I was 
filled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was changeless. The story ended in 
Paris, as I've said.
"For a long time I thought that Claudia's death had been the cause of the end of 
things. That if I had seen Madeleine and Claudia leave Paris safely, things 
might have been different with me and Armand. I might have loved again and 
desired again, and sought some semblance of mortal life which would have been 
rich and varied, though unnatural. But now I have come to see that was false. 
Even if Claudia had not died, even if I had not despised Armand for letting her 
die, it would have all turned out the same. Coming slowly to know his evil, or 
being catapulted into it . . . was all the same. I wanted none of it finally. 
And, deserving nothing better, I closed up like a spider in the flame of a 
match. And even Armand who was my constant companion, and my only companion, 
existed at a great distance from me, beyond that veil which separated me from 
all living things, a veil which was a form of shroud.
"But I know you are eager to hear what became of Armand. And the night is almost 
ended. I want to tell you this because it is very important. The story is 
incomplete without it.
"We traveled the world after we left Paris, as I've told you; first Egypt, then 
Greece, then Italy, Asia Minor-wherever I chose to lead us, really, and wherever 
my pursuit of art led me. Time ceased to exist on any meaningful basis during 
these years, and I was often absorbed in very simple things-a painting in a 
museum, a cathedral window, one single beautiful statue-for long periods of 
time.
"But all during these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New 
Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and 
places of those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it 
acutely and I would feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for 
anything outside my endless pursuit of art. And, from time to time, Armand would 
ask me to take him there. And I, being aware in a gentlemanly manner that I did 
little to please him and often went for long periods without really speaking to 
him or seeking him out, wanted to do this because he asked me. It seemed his 
asking caused me to forget some vague fear that I might feel pain in New 
Orleans, that I might experience again the pale shadow of my former unhappiness 
and longing. But I put it off. Perhaps the fear was stronger than I knew. We 
came to America and lived in New York for a long time. I continued to put it 
off. Then, finally, Armand urged me in another way. He told me something he'd 
concealed from me since the time we were in Paris.
"Lestat had not died in the Theatre des Vampires. I had believed him to be dead, 
and when I asked Armand about those vampires, he told me they all had perished. 
But he told me now that this wasn't so. Lestat had left the theater the night I 
had run away from Armand and sought out the cemetery in Montmartre. Two vampires 
who had been made with Lestat by the same master had assisted him in booking 
passage to New Orleans.
"I cannot convey to you the feeling that came over me when I heard this. Of 
course, Armand told me he had protected me from this knowledge, hoping that I 
would not undertake a long journey merely for revenge, a journey that would have 
caused me pain and grief at the time. But I didn't really care. I hadn't thought 
of Lestat at all the night I'd torched the theater. I'd thought of Santiago and 
Celeste and the others who had destroyed Claudia. Lestat, in fact, had aroused 
in me feelings which I hadn't wished to confide in anyone, feelings I'd wished 
to forget, despite Claudia's death. Hatred had not been one of them.
"But when I heard this now from Armand it was as if the veil that protected me 
were thin and transparent, and though it still hung between me and the world of 
feeling, I perceived through it Lestat, and that I wanted to see him again. And 
with that spurring me on, we returned to New Orleans.
"It was late spring of this year. And as soon as I emerged from the railway 
station, I knew that I had indeed come home. It was as if the very air were 
perfumed and peculiar there, and I felt an extraordinary ease walking on those 
warm, flat pavements, under those familiar oaks, and listening to the ceaseless 
vibrant living sounds of the night.
"Of course, New Orleans was changed. But far from lamenting those changes, I was 
grateful for what seemed still the same. I could find in the uptown Garden 
District, which had been in my time the Faubourg St: Marie, one of the stately 
old mansions that dated back to those times, so removed from the quiet brick 
street that, walking out in the moonlight under its magnolia trees, I knew the 
same sweetness and peace I'd known in the old days; not only in the dark, narrow 
streets of the Vieux Carre but in the wilderness of Pointe du Lac. There were 
the honeysuckle and the roses, and the glimpse of Corinthian columns against the 
stars; and outside the gate were dreamy streets, other mansions . . . it was a 
citadel of grace.
"In the Rue Royale, where I took Armand past tourists and antique shops and the 
bright-lit entrances of fashionable restaurants, I was astonished to discover
the town house where Lestat and Claudia and I had made our home, the facade 
little changed by fresh plaster and whatever repairs had been done within. Its 
two French windows still opened onto the small balconies over the shop below, 
and I could see in the soft brilliance of the electric chandeliers an elegant 
wallpaper that would not have been unfamiliar in those days before the war. I 
had a strong sense of Lestat there, more of a sense of him than of Claudia, and 
I felt certain, though he was nowhere near this town house, that I'd find him in 
New Orleans.
"And I felt something else; it was a sadness that came over me then, after 
Armand had gone on his way. But this sadness was not painful, nor was it 
passionate. It was something rich, however, and almost sweet, like the fragrance 
of the jasmine and the roses that crowded the old courtyard garden which I saw 
through the iron gates. And this sadness gave a subtle satisfaction and held me 
a long time in that spot; arid it held me to the city; and it didn't really 
leave me that night when I went away.
"I wonder now what might have come of this sadness, what it might have 
engendered in me that could have become stronger than itself. But I jump ahead 
of my story.
"Because shortly after that I saw a vampire in New Orleans, a sleek white-faced 
young man walking alone on the broad sidewalks of St. Charles Avenue in the 
early hours before dawn. And I was at once convinced that if Lestat still lived 
here that vampire might know him and might even lead me to him. Of course, the 
vampire didn't see me. I had long ago learned to spot my own kind in large 
cities without their having a chance to see me. Armand, in his brief visits with 
vampires in London and Rome, had learned that the burning of the Theatre des 
Vampires was known throughout the world, and that both of us were considered 
outcasts. Battles over this meant nothing to me, and I have avoided them to this 
day. But I began to watch for this vampire in New Orleans and to follow him, 
though often he led me merely to theaters or other pastimes in which I had no 
interest. But one night, finally, things changed.
"It was a very warts evening, and I could tell as soon as I saw him on St. 
Charles that he had someplace to go. He was not only walking fast, but he seemed 
a little distressed. And when he turned off St. Charles finally on a narrow 
street which became at once shabby and dark, I felt sure he was headed for 
something that would interest me.
"But then he entered one side of a small wooden duplex and brought death to a 
woman there. This he did very fast, without a trace of pleasure; and after he 
was finished, he gathered her child up from the bassinet, wrapped it gently in a 
blue wool blanket, and came out again into the street.
"Only a block or two after that, he stopped before a vine-covered iron fence 
that enclosed a large overgrown yard. I could see an old house beyond the trees, 
dark, the paint peeling, the ornate iron railings of its long upper and lower 
galleries caked with orange rust. It seemed a doomed house, stranded here among 
the numerous small wooden houses, its high empty windows looking out on what 
must have been a dismal clutter of low roofs, a comer grocery, and a small 
adjacent bar.. But the broad, dark grounds protected the house somewhat from 
these things, and I had to move along the fence quite a few feet before I 
finally spotted a faint glimmer in one of the lower windows through the thick 
branches of the trees. The vampire had gone through the gate. I could hear the 
baby wailing, and then nothing. And I followed, easily mounting the old fence 
and dropping down into the garden and coming up quietly onto the long front 
porch.
"It was an amazing sight I saw when I crept up to one of the long, floor-length 
windows. For despite the heat of this breezeless evening when the gallery, even 
with its warped and broken boards, might have been the only tolerable place for 
human or vampire, a fire blazed in the grate of the parlor and all its windows 
were shut, and the young vampire sat by that fire talking to another vampire who 
hovered very near it, his slippered feet right up against the hot grate, his 
trembling fingers pulling over and over at the lapels of his shabby blue robe. 
And, though a frayed electric cord dangled from a plaster wreath of roses in the 
ceiling, only an oil lamp added its dim light to the fire, an oil lamp which 
stood by the wailing child on a nearby table.
"My eyes widened as I studied this stooped and shivering vampire whose rich 
blond hair hung down in loose waves covering his face. I longed to wipe away the 
dust on the window glass which would not let me be certain of what I suspected. 
`You all leave me!' he whined now in a thin, high-pitched voice.
" `You can't keep us with you! said the stiff young vampire sharply. He sat with 
his legs crossed, his arms folded on his narrow chest, his eyes looking around 
the dusty, empty room disdainfully. `Oh, hush!' he said to the baby, who let out 
a sharp cry. `Stop it, stop it.'
" `The wood, the wood,' said the blond vampire feebly, and, as he motioned to 
the other to hand him the fuel by his chair, I saw clearly, unmistakably, the 
profile of Lestat, that smooth skin now devoid of even the faintest trace of his 
old scars.
" `If you'd just go out,' said the other angrily, heaving the chunk of wood into 
the blaze. `If you'd just hunt something other than these miserable animals . . 
. :And he looked about himself in disgust. I saw then, in the shadows, the small 
furry bodies of several cats, lying helter-skelter in the dust. A most 
remarkable thing, because a vampire can no more endure to be near his dead 
victims than any mammal can remain near any place where he has left his waste. 
'Do you know that it's summer?' demanded the young one. Lestat merely rubbed his 
hands. The baby's howling cued off, yet the young vampire added, `Get on with 
it, take it so you'll be warm.'
" `You might have brought me something else!' said Lestat bitterly. And, as he 
looked at the baby, I saw his eyes squinting against the dull light of the smoky 
lamp. I felt a shock of recognition at those eyes, even at the expression 
beneath the shadow of the deep wave of his yellow hair. And yet to hear that 
whining voice, to see that bent and quivering back! Almost without thinking I 
rapped hard on the glass. The young vampire was up at once affecting a hard, 
vicious expression; but I merely motioned for him to turn the latch. And Lestat, 
clutching his bathrobe to his throat, rose from the chair.
" `It's Louis! Louis!' he said. `Let him in' And he gestured frantically, like 
an invalid, for the young `nurse' to obey.
"As soon as the window opened I breathed the stench of the room and its 
sweltering heat. The swarming of the insects on the rotted animals scratched at 
my senses so that I recoiled despite myself, despite Lestat's desperate pleas 
for me to come to him. There, in the far corner, was the coffin where he slept, 
the lacquer peeling from the wood, half covered with piles of yellow newspapers. 
And bones lay in the corners, picked clean except for bits and tufts of fur. But 
Lestat had his dry hands on mine now, drawing me towards him and towards the 
warmth, and I could see the tears welling in his eyes; and only when his mouth 
was stretched in a strange smile of desperate happiness that was near to pain 
did I see the faint traces of the old scars. How baffling and awful it was, this 
smoothfaced, shimmering immortal man bent and rattled and whining like a crone.
" `Yes, Lestat,' I said softly. `I've come to see you' I pushed his hand gently, 
slowly away and moved towards the baby, who was crying desperately now from fear 
as well as hunger. As soon as I lifted it up and loosened the covers, it quieted 
a little, and then I patted it and rocked it. Lestat was whispering to me now in 
quick, half-articulated words I couldn't understand, the tears streaming down 
his cheeks, the young vampire at the open window with a look of disgust on his 
face and one hand (r)n the window latch, as if he meant at any minute to bolt.
" `So you're Louis,' said the young vampire. This seemed to increase Lestat's 
inexpressible. excitement, and he wiped frantically at his tears with the hem of 
his robe.
"A fly lit on the baby's forehead, and involuntarily I gasped as I pressed it 
between two fingers and dropped it dead to the floor. The child was no longer 
crying. It was looking up at me with extraordinary blue eyes, dark-blue eyes, 
its round face glistening from the heat, and a smile played on its lips, a smile 
that grew brighter like a flame. I had never brought death to anything so young, 
so innocent, and I was aware of this now as I held the child with an odd feeling 
of sorrow, stronger even than that feeling which had come over me in the Rue 
Royale. And, rocking the child gently, I pulled the young vampire's chair to the 
fire and sat down.
" `Don't try to speak . . . it's all right,' I said to Lestat, who dropped down 
gratefully into his chair and reached out to stroke the lapels of my coat with 
both hands.
" `But I'm so glad to see you,' he stammered through his tears. `I've dreamed of 
your coming . . . coming. . ' he said. And then he grimaced, as if he were 
feeling a pain he couldn't identify, and again the fine map of scars appeared 
for an instant. He was looking off, his hand up to his ear, as if he meant to 
cover it to defend himself from some terrible sound. `I didn't . . ' he started; 
and then he shook his head, his eyes clouding as he opened them wide, strained 
to focus them. `I didn't mean to let them do it, Louis . . . I mean that 
Santiago . . . that one, you know, he didn't tell me what they planned to do.'
" `That's all past, Lestat,' I said.
" `Yes, yes,' he nodded vigorously. `Past. She should never . . . why, Louis, 
you know. . . ' And he was shaking his head, his voice seeming to gain in 
strength, to gain a little in resonance with his effort. `She should have never 
been one of us, Louis.' And he rapped his sunken chest with his fist as he said 
`Us' again softly.
"She. It seemed then that she had never existed That she had been some 
illogical, fantastical dream that, was too precious and too personal for me ever 
to confide in anyone. And too long gone. I looked at him. I stared at him. And 
tried to think, Yes, the three of us together.
" `Don't fear me, Lestat,' I said, as though talking to myself. `I bring you no 
harm.'
" `You've come back to me, Louis,' he whispered in that thin, high-pitched 
voice. `You've come home again to me, Louis, haven't you?' And again he bit his 
lip and looked at me desperately.
" `No, Lestat.' I shook my head. He was frantic for a moment, and again he 
commenced one gesture and then another and finally sat there with his hands over 
his face in a paroxysm of distress. The other vampire, who was studying me 
coldly, asked:
" `Are you . . . have you come back to him?'
" `No, of course not,' I answered. And he smirked, as if this was as he 
expected, that everything fell to him again, and he walked out onto the porch. I 
could hear him there very near, waiting.
" `I only wanted to see you, Lestat,' I said. But Lestat didn't seem to hear me. 
Something else had distracted him. And he was gazing off, his eyes wide, his 
hands hovering near his ears. Then I heard it also. It was a siren. And as it 
grew louder, his eyes shut tight against it and his fingers covered his ears. 
And it grew louder and louder, coming up the street from downtown. `Lestat!' I 
said to him, over the baby's cries, which rose now in the same terrible fear of 
the siren. But his agony obliterated me. His lips were drawn back from his teeth 
in a terrible grimace of pain. `Lestat, it's only a siren!' I said to him 
stupidly. And then he came forward out of the chair and took hold of me and held 
tight to me, and, despite myself, I took his hand. He bent down, pressing his 
head against my chest and holding my hand so tight that he caused me pain. The 
room was filled with the flashing red light of the siren, and then it was going 
away.
" `Louis, I can't bear it, I can't bear it,' he growled through his tears. `Help 
me, Louis, stay with me.'
" `But why are you afraid?' I asked. `Don't you know what these things are?' And 
as I looked down at him, as I saw his yellow hair pressed against my coat, I had 
a vision of him from long ago, that tall, stately gentleman in the swirling 
black cape, with his head thrown back, his rich, flawless voice singing the 
lilting air of the opera from which we'd only just come, his walking stick 
tapping the cobblestones in time with the music, his large, sparkling eye 
catching the young woman who stood by, enrapt, so that a smile spread over his 
face as the song died on his lips; and for one moment, that one moment when his 
eye met hers, all evil seemed obliterated in that flush of pleasure, that 
passion for merely being alive.
"Was this the price of that involvement? A sensibility shocked by change, 
shriveling from fear? I thought quietly of all' the things I might say to him, 
how I might remind him that he was immortal, that nothing condemned him to this 
retreat save himself, and that he was surrounded with the unmistakable signs of 
inevitable death. But I did not say these things, and I knew that I would not.
"It seemed the silence of the room rushed back around us, like a dark sea that 
the siren had driven away. The flies swarmed on the festering body of a rat, and 
the child looked quietly up at me as though my eyes were bright baubles, and its 
dimpled hand closed on the finger that I poised above its tiny petal mouth.
"Lestat had risen, straightened, but only to bend over and slink into the chair. 
`You won't stay with me,' he sighed. But then he looked away and seemed suddenly 
absorbed.
" `I wanted to talk to you so much,' he said. `That night I came home in the Rue 
Royale I only wanted to talk to you!' He shuddered violently, eyes closed, his 
throat seeming to contract. It was as if the blows I'd struck him then were 
falling now. He stared blindly ahead, his tongue moistening his lip, his voice 
low, almost natural. `I went to Paris after you. . . '
" `What was it you wanted to tell me?' I asked. `What was it you wanted to talk 
about?'
"I could well remember his mad insistence in the Theatre des Vampires. I hadn't 
thought of it in years. No, I had never thought of it. And I was aware that I 
spoke of it now with great reluctance.
"But he only .smiled at me, and insipid, near apologetic smile. And shook his 
head. I watched his eyes fill with a soft, bleary despair.
"I felt a profound, undeniable relief.
" `But you will stay!' he insisted.
" `No,' I answered.
" `And neither will I!' said that young vampire from the darkness outside. And 
he stood for a second in the open window looking at us. Lestat looked up at him 
and then sheepishly away, and his lower lip seemed to thicken and tremble. 
`Close it, close it,' he said, waving his finger at the window. Then a sob burst 
from him and, covering his mouth with his hand, he put his head down and cried.
"The young vampire was gone. I heard his steps moving fast on the walk, heard 
the heavy chink of the iron gate. And I was alone with Lestat, and he was 
crying. It seemed a long time before he stopped, and during all that time I 
merely watched him. I was thinking of all the things that had passed between us. 
I was remembering things which I supposed I had completely forgotten. And I was 
conscious then of that same overwhelming sadness which I'd felt when I saw the 
place in the Rue Royale where we had lived. Only, it didn't seem to me to be a 
sadness for Lestat, for that smart, gay vampire who used to live there then. It 
seemed a sadness for something else, something beyond Lestat that only included 
him and` was part of the great awful sadness of all the things I'd ever lost or 
loved or known. It seemed then I was in a different place, a different time. And 
this different place and time was very real, and it was a room where the insects 
had hummed as they were humming here and the air had been close and thick with 
death and with the spring perfume. And I was on the verge of knowing that place 
and knowing with it a terrible pain, a pain so terrible that my mind veered away 
from it, said, No, don't take me back to that place-and suddenly it was 
receding, and I was with Lestat here now. Astonished, I saw my own tear fall 
onto the face of the child. I saw it glisten on the child's cheek, and I saw the 
cheek become very plump with the child's smile. It must have been seeing the 
fight in the tears.
I put my hand to my face and wiped at the tears that were in fact there and 
looked at them in amazement.
" `But Louis . . .' Lestat was saying softly. `How can you be as you are, how 
can you stand it?' He was looking up at me, his mouth in that same grimace, his 
face wet with tears. `Tell me, Louis, help me to understand! How can you 
understand it all, how can you endure?' And I could see by the desperation in 
his eyes and the deeper tone which his voice had taken that he, too; was pushing 
himself towards something that for him was very painful, towards a place where 
he hadn't ventured in a long time. But then, even as I looked at him, his eyes 
appeared to become misty, confused. And he pulled the robe up tight, and shaking 
his head, he looked at the fire. A shudder passed through him and he moaned.
" `I have to go now, Lestat,' I said to him. I felt weary, weary of him and 
weary of this sadness. And I longed again for the stillness outside, that 
perfect quiet to which I'd become so completely accustomed. But I realized, as I 
rose to my feet, that I was taking the little baby with me.
"Lestat looked up at me now with his large, agonized eyes and his smooth, 
ageless face. `But you'll come back . . . you'll come to visit me . . . Louis?' 
he said.
"I turned away from him, hearing him calling after me, and quietly left the 
house. When I reached the street, I looked back and I could see him hovering at 
the window as if he were afraid to go out. I realized he had not gone out for a 
long, long time, and it occurred to me then that perhaps he would never go out 
again.
"I returned to the small house from which the vampire had taken the child, and 
left it there in its crib."
"Not very long after that I told Armand I'd seen Lestat. Perhaps it was a month, 
I'm not certain. Time meant little to me then, as it means little to me now. But 
it meant a great deal to Armand. He was amazed that I hadn't mentioned this 
before.
"We were walking that night uptown where the city gives way to the Audubon Park 
and the levee is a deserted, grassy slope that descends to a muddy beach heaped 
here and there with driftwood, going out to the lapping waves of the river. On 
the far bank were the very dim lights of industries and river-front companies, 
pinpoints of green or red that flickered in the distance like stars. And the 
moon showed the broad, strong current moving fast between the two shores; and 
even the summer heat was gone here, with the cool breeze coming off the water 
and gently lifting the moss that hung from the twisted oak where we sat. I was 
picking at the grass, and tasting it, though the taste was bitter and unnatural. 
The gesture seemed natural. I was feeling almost that I might never leave New 
Orleans. But then, what are such thoughts when you can live forever? Never leave 
New Orleans `again?' Again seemed a human word.
" `But didn't you feel any desire for revenge?' Armand asked. He lay on the 
grass beside me, his weight on his elbow, his eyes fixed on me.
" `Why?' I asked calmly. I was wishing, as I often wished, that he was not 
there, that I was alone. Alone with this powerful and cool river under the dim 
moon. `He's met with his own perfect revenge. He's dying, dying of rigidity, of 
fear. His mind cannot accept this time. Nothing as serene and graceful as that 
vampire death you once described to me in Paris. I think he is dying as clumsily 
and grotesquely as humans often die in this century . . . of old age.'
" `But you . . . what did you feel?' he insisted softly. And I was struck by the 
personal quality of that question, and how long it had been since either of us 
had spoken to the other in that way. I had a strong sense of him then, the 
separate being that he was, the calm and collected creature with the straight 
auburn hair and the large, sometimes melancholy eyes, eyes that seemed often to 
be seeing nothing but their own thoughts. Tonight they were lit with a dull fire 
that was unusual.
" `Nothing,' I answered.
"`Nothing one way or the other?'
"I answered no. I remembered palpably that sorrow. It was as if the sorrow 
hadn't left me suddenly, but had been near me all this time, hovering, saying, 
'Come.' But I wouldn't tell this to Armand, wouldn't reveal this. And I had the 
strangest sensation of feeling his need for me to tell him this . . this, or 
something . . . a need strangely akin to the need for living blood.
" `But did he tell you anything, anything that made you feel the old hatred . . 
.' he murmured. And it was at this point that I became keenly aware of how 
distressed he was.
" `What is it, Armand? Why do you ask this?' I said.
"But he lay back on the steep levee then, and for a long time he appeared to be 
looking at the stars. The stars brought back to me something far too specific, 
the ship that had carried Claudia and me to Europe, and those nights at sea when 
it seemed the stars came down to touch the waves.
" `I thought perhaps he would tell you something about Paris . .' Armand said.
" `What should he say about Paris? That he didn't want Claudia to die?' I asked. 
Claudia again; the name sounded strange. Claudia spreading out that game of 
solitaire on the table that shifted with the shifting of the sea, the lantern 
creaking on its hook, the black porthole full of the stars. She had her head 
bent, her fingers poised above her ear as if about to loosen strands of her 
hair. And I had the most disconcerting sensation: that in my memory she would 
look up from that game of solitaire, and the sockets of her eyes would be empty.
" `You could have told me anything you wanted about Paris, Armand,' I said. 
`Long before now. It wouldn't have mattered.'
" `Even that it was I who . . ?'
"I turned to him as he lay there looking at the sky. And I saw the extraordinary 
pain in his face, in his eyes. It seemed his eyes were huge, too huge, and the 
white face that framed them too gaunt.
`That it was you who killed her? Who forced her out into that yard and locked 
her there?' I asked. I smiled. `Don't tell me you have been feeling pain for it 
all these years, not you.'
"And then he closed his eyes and turned his face away, his hand resting on his 
chest as if I'd struck him an awful, sudden blow.
" `You can't convince me you care about this,' I said to him coldly. And I 
looked out towards the water, and again that feeling came over me . . . that I 
wished to be alone. In a little while I knew I would get up and go off by 
myself. That is, if he didn't leave me first. Because I would have liked to 
remain there actually. It was a quiet, secluded place.
" `You care about nothing . . .' he was saying. And then he sat up slowly and 
turned to me so again I could see that dark fire in his eyes. `I thought you 
would at least care about that. I thought you would feel the old passion, the 
old anger if you were to see him again. I thought something would quicken and 
come alive in you if you saw him . . . if you returned to this place.'
" 'That I would come back to life?' I said softly. And I felt the cold metallic 
hardness of my words as I spoke, the modulation, the control. It was as if I 
were cold all over, made of metal, and he were fragile suddenly; fragile, as he 
had been, actually, for a long time.
" `Yes!' he cried out. `Yes, back to life!' And then he seemed puzzled, 
positively confused. And a strange thing occurred. He bowed his head at that 
moment as if he were defeated. And something in the way that he felt that 
defeat, something in the way his smooth white face reflected it only for an 
instant, reminded me of someone else I'd seen defeated in just that way. And it 
was amazing to me that it took me such a long moment to see Claudia's face in 
that attitude; Claudia, as she stood by the bed in the room at the Hotel 
Saint-Gabriel pleading with me to transform Madeleine into one of us. That same 
helpless look, that defeat which seemed to be so heartfelt that everything 
beyond it was forgotten. And then he, like Claudia, seemed to rally, to pull on 
some reserve of strength. But he said softly to the air, `I am dying!'
"And I, watching him, hearing him, the only creature under God who heard him, 
knowing completely that it was true, said nothing.
"A long sigh escaped his lips. His head was' bowed. His right hand lay limp 
beside him in the grass. `Hatred. . . that is passion,' he said `Revenge, that 
is passion.. '
" `Not from me . . ' I murmured softly. `Not now.'
"And then his eyes fixed on me and his face seemed very calm. `I used to believe 
you would get over it, that when the pain of all of it left you, you would grow 
warm again and filled with love, and filled with that wild and insatiable 
curiosity with which you first came to me, that inveterate conscience, and that 
hunger for knowledge that brought you all the way to Paris to my cell. I thought 
it was a part of you that couldn't die. And I thought that when the pain was 
gone you would forgive me for what part I played in her death. She never loved 
you, you know. Not in the way that I loved you, and the way that you loved us 
both. I knew this! I understood it! And I believed I would gather you to me and 
hold you. And time would open to us, and we would be the teachers of one 
another. All the things that gave you happiness would give me happiness; and I 
would be the protector of your pain. My power would be your power. My strength 
the same. But you're dead inside to me, you're cold and beyond my reach! It is 
as if I'm not here, beside you. And, not being here with you, I have the 
dreadful feeling that I don't exist at all. And you are as cold and distant from 
me as those strange modern paintings of lines and hard forms that I cannot love 
or comprehend, as alien as those hard mechanical sculptures of this age which 
have no human form. I shudder when I'm near you. I look into your eyes and my 
reflection isn't there . . . .'
" `What you asked was impossible!' I said quickly. `Don't you see? What I asked 
was impossible, too, from the start.'
"He protested, the negation barely forming on his lips, his hand rising as if to 
thrust it away.
" `I wanted love and goodness in this which is living death,' I said. `It was 
impossible from the beginning, because you cannot have love and goodness when 
you do what you know to be evil, what you know to be wrong. You can only have 
the desperate confusion and longing and the chasing of phantom goodness in its 
human form. I knew the real answer to my quest before I ever reached Paris. I 
knew it when I first took a human life to feed my craving. It was my death. And 
yet I would not accept it, could not accept it, because like all creatures I 
don't wish to die! And so I sought for other vampires, for Cod, for the devil, 
for a hundred things under a hundred names. And it was all the same, all evil. 
And all wrong. Because no one could in any guise convince me of what I myself 
knew to be true, that I was damned in my own mind and soul. And when I came to 
Paris I thought you were powerful and beautiful and without regret, and I wanted 
that desperately. But you were a destroyer just as I was a destroyer, more 
ruthless and cunning even than I. You showed me the only thing that I could 
really hope to become, what depth of evil, what degree of coldness I would have 
to attain to end my pain. And I accepted that. And so that passion, that love 
you saw in me, was extinguished. And you see now simply a mirror of yourself.'
"A very long time passed before he spoke. He'd risen to his feet, and he stood 
with his back to me looking down the river, head bowed as before, his hands at 
his sides. I was looking at the river also. I was thinking quietly, There is 
nothing more I can say, nothing more I can do.
" `Louis,' he said now, lifting his head, his voice very thick and unlike 
itself.
" `Yes, Armand,' I said.
" `Is there anything else you want of me, anything else you require?'
" `No,' I said. `What do you mean?'
"He didn't answer this. He began to slowly walk away. I think at first I thought 
he only meant to walk a few paces, perhaps to wander by himself along the muddy 
beach below. And by the time I realized that he was leaving me, he was a mere 
speck down there against the occasional flickering in the water under the moon. 
I never saw him again.
"Of course, it was several nights later before I realized he was gone. His 
coffin remained. But he did not return to it. And it was several months before I 
had that coffin taken to the St. Louis cemetery and put into the crypt beside my 
own. The grave, long neglected because my family was gone, received the only 
thing he'd left behind. But then I began to be uncomfortable with that. I 
thought of it on waking, and again at dawn right before I closed my eyes. And I 
went downtown one night and took the coffin out, and broke it into pieces and 
left it in the narrow aisle of the cemetery in the tall grass.
"That vampire who was Lestat's latest child accosted me one evening not long 
after. He begged me to tell him all I knew of the world, to become his companion 
and his teacher. I remember telling him that what I chiefly knew was that I'd 
destroy him if I ever saw him again. `You see, someone must die every night that 
I walk, until I've the courage to end it,' I told him. `And you're an admirable 
choice for that victim, a killer as evil as myself.'
"And I left New Orleans the next night because the sorrow wasn't leaving me. And 
I didn't want to think of that old house where Lestat was dying. Or that sharp, 
modem vampire who'd fled me. Or of Armand.
"I wanted to be where there was nothing familiar to me. And nothing mattered.
"And that's the end of it. There's nothing else."
The boy sat mute, staring at the vampire. And the vampire sat collected, his 
hands folded on the table, his narrow, red-rimmed eyes fixed on the turning 
tapes. His face was so gaunt now that the veins of his temples showed as if 
carved out of stone. And he sat so still that only his green eyes evinced life, 
and that life was a dull fascination with the turning of the tapes.
Then the boy drew back and ran the fingers of his right hand loosely through his 
hair. "No," he said with a short intake of breath. Then he said it again louder, 
"No!"'
The vampire didn't appear to bear him. His eyes moved away from the tapes 
towards the window, towards the dark, gray sky.
"It didn't have to end like that!" said the boy, leaning forward.
The vampire, who continued to look at the sky, uttered a short, dry laugh.
"All the things you felt in Paris!" said the boy, his voice increasing in 
volume. "The love of Claudia, the feeling, even the feeling for Lestat! It 
didn't have to end, not in this, not in despair! Because that's what it is, 
isn't it? Despair!"
"Stop," said the vampire abruptly, lifting his right hand. His eyes shifted 
almost mechanically to the boy's face. "I tell you and I have told you, that it 
could not have ended any other way."
"I don't accept it," said the boy, and he folded his arms across his chest, 
shaking his head emphatically. "I can't!" And the emotion seemed to build in 
him, so that without meaning to, he scraped his chair back on the bare boards 
and rose to pace the floor. But then, when he turned and looked at the vampire's 
face again, the words he was about to speak died in his throat. The vampire was 
merely staring at him, and his face had that long drawn expression of both 
outrage and bitter amusement.
"Don't you see how you made it sound? It was an adventure like I'll never know 
in my whole life! You talk about passion, you talk about longing! You talk about 
things that millions of us won't ever taste or come to understand. And then you 
tell me it ends like that. I tell you . . ." And he stood over the vampire now, 
his hands outstretched before him. "If you were to give me that power! The power 
to see and feel and live forever!"
The vampire's eyes slowly began to widen, his lips parting. "What!" he demanded 
softly. " What!"
"Give it to me!" said the boy, his right hand tightening in a fist, the fist 
pounding his chest. "Make me a vampire now!" he said as the vampire stared 
aghast.
What happened then was swift and confused, but it ended abruptly with the 
vampire on his feet holding the boy by the shoulders, the boy's moist face 
contorted with fear, the vampire glaring at him in rage. "This is what you 
want?" he whispered, his pale lips manifesting only the barest trace of 
movement. "This . . . after all I've told you . . . is what you ask for?"
A small cry escaped the boy's lips, and he began to tremble all over, the sweat 
breaking out on his forehead and on the skin above his upper lip. His hand 
reached gingerly for the vampire's arm. "You don't know what human life is 
like!." he said, on the edge of breaking into tears. "You've forgotten. You 
don't even understand the meaning of your own story, what it means to a human 
being like me." And then a choked sob interrupted his words, and his fingers 
clung to the vampire's arm.
"God," the vampire uttered and, turning away from him, almost pushed the boy 
off-balance against the wall. Ire stood with his back to the boy, staring at the 
gray window.
"I beg you . . . give it all one more chance. One more chance in me!" said the 
boy.
The vampire turned to him, his face as twisted with anger as before. And then, 
gradually, it began to become smooth. The lids came down slowly over his eyes 
and his lips lengthened in a smile. He looked again at the boy. "I've failed," 
he sighed, smiling still. "I have completely failed. . "
"No . . ." the boy protested.
"Don't say any more," said the vampire emphatically. "I have but one chance 
left. Do you see the reels? They still turn. I have but one way to show you the 
meaning of what I've said." And then he reached out for the boy so fast that the 
boy found himself grasping for something, pushing against something that was not 
there, so his hand was outstretched still when the vampire had him pressed to 
his chest, the boy's neck bent beneath his lips. "Do you see?" whispered the 
vampire, and the long, silky lips drew up over his teeth and two long fangs came 
down into the boy's flesh. The boy stuttered, a low guttural sound coming out of 
his throat, his hand struggling to close on something, his eyes widening only to 
become dull and gray as the vampire drank. And the vampire meantime looked as 
tranquil as someone in sleep. His narrow chest heaved so subtly with his sigh 
that he seemed to be rising slowly from the floor and then settling again with 
that same somnambulistic grace. There was a whine coming from the boy, and when 
the vampire let him go he held him out with both hands and looked at the damp 
white face, the limp hands, the eyes half closed.
The boy was moaning, his lower lip loose and trembling as if in nausea. He 
moaned again louder, and his head fell back and his eyes rolled up into his 
head. The vampire set him down gently in the chair. The boy was straggling to 
speak, and the tears which sprang now to his eyes seemed to come as much from 
that effort to speak as from anything . else. His head fell forward, heavily, 
drunkenly, and his hand rested on the table. The vampire stood looking down at 
him, and his white skin became a soft luminous pink. It was as if a pink light 
were shining on him and his entire being seemed to give back that light. The 
flesh of his lips was dark, almost rose in color, and the veins of his temples 
and his hands were mere traces on his skin, and his face was youthful and 
smooth.
"Will I . . . die?" the boy whispered as he looked up slowly, his mouth wet and 
slack. "Will I die?" he groaned, his lip trembling.
"I don't know," the vampire said, and he smiled.
The boy seemed on the verge of saying something more, but the hand that rested 
on the table slid forward on the boards, and his head lay down beside it as he 
lost consciousness.
When next he opened his eyes, the boy saw the sun. It filled the dirty, 
undressed window and was hot on the side of his face and his hand. For a moment, 
he lay there, his face against the table and then with a great effort, he 
straightened, took a long deep breath and closing his eyes, pressed his hand to 
that place where the vampire had drawn blood. When his other hand accidentally 
touched a band of metal on the top of the tape recorder, he let out a sudden cry 
because the metal was hot.
Then he rose, moving clumsily, almost falling, until he rested both his hands on 
the white wash basin. Quickly he turned on the tap, splashed his face with cold 
water, and wiped it with a soiled towel that hung there on a nail. He was 
breathing regularly now and he stood still, looking into the mirror without any 
support. Then he looked at his watch. It was as if the watch shocked him, 
brought him more to life than the sun or the water. And he made a quick search 
of the room, of the hallway, and, finding nothing and no one, he settled again 
into the chair. Then, drawing a small white pad out of his pocket, and a pen, he 
set these on the table and touched the button of the recorder. The tape spun 
fast backwards until he shut it off. When he heard the vampire's voice, he 
leaned forward, listening very carefully, then hit the button again for another 
place, and, hearing that, still another. But then at last his face brightened, 
as the reels turned and the voice spoke in an even modulated tone: "It was a 
very warm evening, and I could tell as soon as I saw him on St. Charles that he 
had someplace to go . . .'"
And quickly the boy noted:
"Lestat . . . off St. Charles Avenue. Old house crumbling . . . shabby 
neighborhood. Look for rusted railings."
And then, stuffing the notebook quickly in his pocket, he gathered the tapes 
into his brief case, along with the small recorder, and hurried down the long 
hallway and down the stairs to the street, where in front of the corner bar his 
car was parked.
 
